Cruelty to animals has no place in equestrian sport. And yet there are repeated incidents. The Olympic Committee has taken initial measures. The riders are under particular scrutiny.
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- A video by dressage rider Charlotte Dujardin once again draws attention to the issue of animal welfare in sport.
- The Olympian has since apologized for the footage and withdrawn from the Games.
- There is a lot at stake for equestrian sport. Tolerance for cruelty to animals is dwindling.
Before the Paris 2024 Olympic Games had even opened, a scandal rocked equestrian sport on Wednesday. The British dressage rider and three-time Olympic champion Charlotte Dujardin was at the center of it.
An incriminating video shows Dujardin making disproportionate use of a whip during a training session. She struck the animal more than 24 times in one minute. The World Equestrian Federation then launched an investigation, while Dujardin withdrew from her planned Olympic start and publicly apologized.
Critical voices and growing awareness of animal welfare
This is not the first scandal in equestrian sport to come to public attention. The case of modern pentathlete Annika Zillekens (formerly Schleu) was particularly prominent at the last Olympic Games. While in the lead, her horse Saint Boy refused to jump an obstacle three times.
With tears in her eyes, the German beat the animal with whip and spurs, while her trainer Kim Raisner urged her to beat harder. It was all to no avail. What remained was a heated discussion about cruelty to animals in equestrian sport, which is now being reopened once again.
However, Charlotte Dujardin's name is just one of a list of prominent athletes who have been criticized for their treatment of horses in recent years. Another example is Mark Todd, a legend of military sport, who was seen in a video in 2022 hitting his horse with a stick. German show jumper Max Kühner, who competes for Austria, is the subject of criminal proceedings for so-called "barring". In this method, a stick is hit against a horse's legs to make it pull them higher when overcoming an obstacle.
Tolerance is increasingly decreasing
Nevertheless, awareness of animal welfare in the sporting world has increased as a result, so that even individual violations are being tolerated less and less, as Dujardin has now also experienced. Athletes cannot hope for support after the publication of such video material. As a rule, all that remains is to limit the damage to their own image.
However, the incidents not only cast a bad light on the individual riders, but also on the organizers. The Olympic Committee (IOC) has little appetite for this, which is why it has already been decided that riding will no longer be part of the modern pentathlon discipline from 2028.
A warning signal. If that doesn't help either, other competitions could follow. In Paris, the Olympians will therefore be under particular scrutiny when they compete against the picturesque backdrop of the Palace of Versailles. It is up to them to restore confidence in equestrian sport while putting animal welfare first.
