The Dujardin scandal has rocked equestrian sport. Does it have a future at the Olympics?

“Take away equestrian occasions from the Olympic Video games.”

The assertion from the Individuals for the Moral Remedy of Animals (PETA), a United States-based animal rights group, didn’t pull any punches.

“Horses don’t volunteer — they will solely undergo violence and coercion. It’s time for the Olympics to maneuver into the fashionable period.”

This was after a video emerged, two days earlier than the 2024 Paris Olympics’ opening ceremony, of Nice Britain’s three-time dressage gold medallist Charlotte Dujardin “excessively” whipping a horse throughout a training session 4 years in the past.

Charlotte Dujardin, Britain’s joint-most adorned feminine Olympian, has been provisionally suspended & is not going to compete at Paris 2024.

This video has emerged of the dressage star which she mentioned confirmed her ‘making an error of judgement’. pic.twitter.com/PQ9rPQTD04

— Good Morning Britain (@GMB) July 24, 2024

Dujardin introduced her withdrawal from all competitions — together with the Paris Video games — whereas underneath investigation by the Worldwide Federation for Equestrian Sports activities (FEI), who later confirmed she had been provisionally banned for six months.

The game has since come underneath intense scrutiny and the query being requested is: do equestrian sports activities have a spot on the trendy Olympic Video games?

Whereas animal rights activists imagine there must be a blanket ban on all horse sports activities, others within the Olympic trade imagine their place as a sport on the Video games shouldn’t be underneath “rapid menace” and can be shocked in the event that they had been dropped. They did, nevertheless, describe the Dujardin scandal as a “wake-up name” and underlined how the equestrian world shouldn’t be complacent.

What has the response been inside the sport?

The video of Dujardin was an enormous shock to her long-time team-mate and mentor Carl Hester, whose Gloucestershire yard is the place Dujardin trains.

“It’s tough, after all it’s,” mentioned the Olympian, who signed a press release from the board members of the Worldwide Dressage Riders Membership final week that “universally condemned” Dujardin’s actions.

Hester, who mentioned the incident didn’t happen at his yard, is competing within the dressage competitors in Paris. “I’ve recognized her for 17 years. She’s a mum, she has a small little one. She has paid very closely in a method that you simply wouldn’t imagine.

“That video is pretty apparent and no one goes to assist that. You may’t (assist it). However over 17 years, I’ve not seen that, that’s not her.”

In her assertion, Dujardin apologised in what she described as an “error of judgment” and mentioned she was “deeply ashamed and will have set a greater instance”.

“She clearly accepts what she did, which she needed to do and I’m glad she has accomplished that, for her,” added Hester. “That is 4 years in the past, folks do make errors — what can we do, by no means forgive folks for all of the issues which have occurred?

“It’s going to be an extended street for her and a lesson for everyone within the horse world. We’ve to place horses first and present that.”

The shockwaves rippled all through the equestrian world, in accordance with Tom McEwen, who gained gold for Workforce GB within the crew eventing alongside Laura Collett and Ros Canter this week.

“I didn’t just like the look of it and I didn’t wish to see her persisting with using the whip,” Mary King, who gained three Olympic medals in eventing with Workforce GB, tells The Athletic. “The size of time she did it was incorrect.” King additionally added the timing of the video’s launch to cease Dujardin competing on the Olympics was “horrible”.

“Everyone knows it wants to vary if that is on the market,” mentioned Hester. “We’re going to have to try this however as we now have seen from the previous few days of sport right here (in Paris), we’ve seen the care, the grooms who work extremely exhausting, how they love and take care of the horses and I hope that begins to indicate how that works.”

Is that this an remoted incident or a wider downside?

PETA’s vice chairman, Kathy Guillermo, was “horrified” however “not shocked” by the video, explaining the group incessantly receives whistleblower movies from grassroots to skilled riders in every self-discipline: dressage, showjumping and eventing. “It’s change into so commonplace that I’m shocked when any individual isn’t abusing a horse,” she says. “That sounds harsh, however it’s extra frequent than not.”

In line with Guillermo, the quantity of proof PETA receives reveals dressage is essentially the most “problematic” of equestrian occasions. “Dressage shouldn’t be pure to a horse. It began out to be the coaching of a horse to make use of their stability and bodily attributes in a traditional method, and it grew into one thing very distorted.”

King refutes that dressage has overstepped the mark. “A rider can solely produce a horse to what they’re able to doing,” she says.

However the difficulty goes past dressage. PETA additionally wrote to the FEI calling for the elimination of Brazilian occasion rider Carlos Parro after images confirmed him allegedly performing “hyperflexion of the horse’s neck so extreme that it seems deformed”, a apply often called rollkur that violates FEI guidelines. The FEI issued a warning for inflicting “pointless discomfort to a horse” however allowed Parro to compete.

One of many photographs of Parro that PETA submitted to FEI (PETA)

Austria showjumper Max Kuehner can be going through a cost in Germany for committing an offence in Might 2023 towards the Animal Welfare Act for “poling” or “rapping”, a way whereby the horse’s legs are hit with a pole as they go over the bounce to make it suppose it hit the fence, so the animal will decide his legs up increased the subsequent time. The Munich court docket is not going to present extra data on the matter till September 2024 and the FEI informed The Athletic it’ll await the process’s final result.

In April 2024, the European Equestrian Federation surveyed greater than 9,000 folks, nearly all of whom had been European national-level riders, and revealed that 90 per cent of individuals, from grassroots to worldwide stage, had witnessed cases of poor horse welfare at house, and greater than half of these cases had occurred prior to now six months. The survey additionally reported feedback centered on dressage and the sentiment that judging guidelines and requirements are affecting coaching strategies.

But the FEI president Ingmar De Vos informed the BBC: “It’s worthwhile to put it (Dujardin’s case) into context. We’ve many riders, athletes and horses and it’s a really low proportion. However each case is a case an excessive amount of. We have to consistently educate our athletes as a result of what was allowed 30 years in the past shouldn’t be allowed as we speak. We wish folks to talk up as a result of we because the FEI, the guardian of our sport and horses, have to work with our group to make our sport higher.”

The chief government of world equine charity World Horse Welfare, Roly Owers, doesn’t imagine the problem is “systemic” nevertheless it does transcend the incident with Dujardin.

“There’s a actual problem,” he says. “This case must be handled as one other actual wake-up name. If horse sport is to have a future, it has to indicate always, each on the competitors area and at house, that the horse is the important thing stakeholder. Their welfare is the primary precedence and sadly, that wasn’t the case right here (referring to the Dujardin video).

“There’s an enormous distinction between contemplating a whip as nearly an extension of the arm, the place you’re utilizing it as an support, both tickling or tapping, permitting the horse time to reply, and utilizing the whip as a weapon to strike the place the horse is not going to solely not perceive, however as you noticed in that video, will get frightened as nicely.”

From his six-month stint within the equestrian world as former interim chair of British Equestrian, Ed Warner famous sure attitudes within the sport wanted modernisation, together with horse welfare.

“Most house owners, riders, coaches are clearly fully dedicated to the welfare of their horses,” says Warner, author of Sport Inc and a former UK Athletics chair. “As in lots of sports activities, there are some dangerous apples, rotten apples, or simply folks with outdated views on the margin that permit the game down. I discovered it to be a slightly closed world. It could do no hurt shining a brighter highlight onto it for the great of the game.”

King maintains that mistreatment of horses shouldn’t be commonplace and they’re handled like “kings and queens” to assist them carry out at their greatest. Benefiting from nutritionists and physiotherapists, top-level horses “dwell a lifetime of luxurious,” she says.

“This cruelty isn’t concerned in what we do. The higher they’re cared for, the higher they’re going to go to competitors. All of us completely adore our horses. We’re coaching them to belief us.

“There are occasions when, like mentioning youngsters, they should know black and white, what’s proper and incorrect, for them to progress fortunately and confidently.”

King on Imperial Cavalier on the 2012 London Olympics (John Macdougall/AFP/GettyImages)

King provides complete belief between human and animal is important to a profitable partnership — and that takes time. “They’re a lot larger and stronger than we’re,” she says. “In the event that they don’t wish to do one thing, they gained’t. There’s not a lot we are able to do about it.”

However PETA’s Guillermo, who used to compete in equestrian occasions as a teen and performed polo, disagrees. “That’s a pleasant fantasy, the concept as a result of any individual is aware of a horse, that horse is working exhausting for them. It’s equally true a horse will work exhausting when coerced into doing so, when handled violently to take action, as we now have seen with Dujardin.”

The standing of equestrianism as an Olympic sport

PETA is steadfast in its method to banning horse sports activities from the Olympics and Paralympics (the latter solely consists of dressage).

“I don’t suppose they’re going to final for much longer,” says Guillermo. “An excessive amount of of the reality is popping out. The historical past of using horses within the Olympic Video games is rife with scandal. It’s simply that the majority of it didn’t make the headlines.

“There have been drugging points, points with accidents, horses whose tongues have been tied down into their mouths to maintain the tongues from coming above the bit.

“The Olympics are going to modernise and realise that this sort of abuse scandal shouldn’t be price it and that it actually has no place within the trendy world.”

On the 2028 Olympics, impediment course racing will exchange showjumping as one of many disciplines of the fashionable pentathlon after a German coach was seen placing a horse on the Tokyo Olympics three years in the past. Nonetheless, evaluating that a part of trendy pentathlon to the designated dressage, eventing or showjumping occasions is like evaluating apples and oranges — within the multi-event model, it’s a lottery which horse is assigned to which rider and there’s no alternative for a partnership to be fashioned.

Saint Boy, the horse struck by a coach in Tokyo. Rider Annika Schleu confronted criticism for her repeated whip use (Marijan Murat/image alliance by way of Getty Photographs)

Such a precedent is regarding for these concerned in equestrianism, which first featured on the Video games in 1900 and has been included in each version since 1912, however Owers believes the game reveals the “final advantage of the horse-human relationship working in concord”, which he says must be cherished and offered on the world stage.

Its historic place on the Olympics, too, shouldn’t be disregarded. “It could be incorrect to downgrade the significance of heritage within the roster of Olympic sports activities,” says Warner, now chair of GB Wheelchair Rugby, who additionally notes equestrian occasions’ comparatively robust reputation with the worldwide tv viewers.

“They’re not the preferred sports activities, however they’re removed from the least standard both,” he says.

There’s a royal component at play too. Members of the Dutch, Spanish, Jordanian and British royal households have been FEI presidents through the years, together with Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh, and Princess Anne. The Princess Royal competed on the 1976 Olympics in crew eventing and offered the medals to the eventers on Monday. Her daughter, Zara Phillips, gained Olympic silver in the identical occasion at London 2012.

However in addition to the urgent difficulty of horse welfare, King, together with others, raises the priority of the excessive monetary prices of internet hosting equestrian occasions at an Olympics, given horses must be flown around the globe, to not point out the amenities required.

What components are thought-about when dropping or reintroducing sports activities?

Past the standard Olympic sports activities, equivalent to biking, swimming, athletics, gymnastics and rowing, each occasion is preventing to maintain its spot, in accordance with Warner.

The Worldwide Olympic Committee (IOC) has been challenged over current years by the lower within the variety of cities keen to host the Olympic Video games, given the ever-increasing variety of athletes and collaborating sports activities.

It consistently evaluations the sports activities programme and appears for a mixture of the standard and the brand new to stay related to as we speak’s youth. In Paris, there was the addition of breaking and the return of skateboarding, browsing and sport climbing from Tokyo. The 2028 Video games will characteristic flag soccer and squash for the primary time, in addition to the return of baseball, softball, cricket and lacrosse.

On the finish of every Video games, the IOC seems at a Rubik’s Dice of things for all sports activities: ticket gross sales, broadcast views, the game’s success between video games, the world championship of a non-Olympic sport, the enchantment to a younger and world viewers. As you’ll be able to think about, it will get extremely political.

Many sports activities have come underneath strain for various causes. Trendy pentathlon was on the cusp of being dropped from the 2028 Olympic programme, and the inclusion of boxing is but to be confirmed due to governance points.

Will equestrian occasions be on the 2028 Olympics?

The IOC works one Video games prematurely so the sports activities programme for the 2028 Olympics has already been locked in, together with equestrian occasions. However it has the facility to take away any occasion if it needs and can evaluate codecs and quotas after Paris.

Simon Clegg, former CEO of the British Olympic Affiliation (BOA) and a former Workforce GB chef de mission, warns towards a “knee-jerk response” to the incident with Dujardin, and can be very shocked if the IOC dropped a person self-discipline, equivalent to dressage, or a complete sport. As a substitute, he encourages the FEI to analyze the case correctly and let due course of take its course. It will likely be as much as the IOC if it needs to observe by means of on horse welfare points.

Warner doesn’t imagine equestrian occasions are underneath any “rapid menace” however thinks these concerned within the sport can not get complacent.

“The IOC is acutely aware of its fame and the way any mistreatment of horses will look to the broader public that doesn’t perceive horse sport and simply watches it each 4 years when the Olympics comes round,” he says.

The important thing for Warner is for the game to not lose perspective of the way it would possibly seem from the skin and make sure the highest requirements of horse welfare are delivered.

“If that may be accomplished, and if the FEI is suitably exhausting on those who transgress, it’ll be fantastic,” Warner says. “The preliminary suspension for Dujardin reveals significant intent. The onus is on the FEI to make sure it doesn’t suppose that out of sight means out of thoughts on the subject of finalising the case.”

The place does the game go from right here?

“Any horse abuse case is unacceptable and can at all times be acted upon by the FEI,” a spokesperson for the worldwide governing physique informed The Athletic.

“The FEI has a sturdy authorized system to sanction those who violate the foundations and search to abuse their horses. The IOC has full belief within the FEI and likewise has confidence we’ll handle these instances correctly.”

Additionally they have a brand new motion plan for equine welfare technique, comprising six precedence areas that embrace coaching, driving and recognising bodily and emotional stress.

The problem equestrianism faces, in accordance with Owers of World Horse Welfare, is displaying the general public that “equine welfare is the precedence above any aggressive or business affect”.

Owers and Warner imagine it’s about constructing a tradition the place folks name out malpractice to result in change. Similar to another sport, it’s unrealistic for a governing physique to attend each particular person coaching session and sometimes riders can have their horses on their personal yard.

Schooling — from prime riders to grassroots — consciousness of points, competitors stewards and lively bystanders all play a task. King advocates for high quality trainers to be extra accessible to younger riders to boost their training.

“Be very clear about what’s an appropriate coaching methodology and what’s not,” Owers says. “That has to return very, in a short time.”

PETA, nevertheless, requires a extra goal stewarding method.

“The FEI wants an individual current with deep expertise in equine drugs and animal welfare who shouldn’t be concerned in these sports activities. The coaches and the veterinarians are so wrapped up on this world that what’s clearly abuse to others ceases to appear like abuse to them. We want an observer who understands horses and abuse who shouldn’t be a part of that world.”

Owers additionally suggests the implementation of an nameless reporting framework throughout all ranges from the FEI to driving faculties. The survey talked about earlier discovered that 60 per cent of respondents didn’t know who to contact in the event that they needed to report a horse welfare difficulty, and grooms at personal yards had been in a weak place in the event that they raised stories towards their employer.

“The regulators have gotten a task to play, nevertheless it begins with the person rider,” he says. “If we don’t place equine welfare on the centre of horse sport, then it has no place on the worldwide stage.

“However you place it on the centre and we imagine it has a beautiful instance of the horse-human relationship which has been happening for millennia.

“However it’s obtained to earn that proper.”

(High photographs: Getty Photographs/Design: Dan Goldfarb)