Charlotte Dujardin, one of the world’s most renowned dressage riders, will not compete at the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris after video footage emerged showing the British athlete repeatedly whipping a horse during a training session.
In the video, Dujardin, who has won six Olympic equestrian medals — three gold, a silver and two bronze — repeatedly strikes a horse being ridden by another person as an onlooker laughs.
The video, released by Stephan Wensing, a Dutch lawyer who specializes in equine matters, and published by several British news outlets, surfaced a day after Dujardin announced that she was pulling out of the Paris Games, which begin on Friday, for what she said was an “error of judgment during a coaching session.”
Dujardin, 39, did not specify what she had done, but said in a statement on social media, “What happened was completely out of character and does not reflect how I train my horses or coach my pupils.”
“There is no excuse,” she added. “I am deeply ashamed and should have set a better example in that moment.”
On Tuesday, the International Federation for Equestrian Sports said it had provisionally suspended Dujardin from all competitions for six months. The British Equestrian Federation also suspended her, making her ineligible for international or national events.
Wensing said that his client was an amateur dressage rider who had filmed the footage during a training session. Wensing said that his client had declined to release the footage for so long because his client did not think the dressage authorities would take seriously a complaint against one of the world’s best riders.
His client changed that opinion, Wensing said, after the Danish authorities recently investigated and punished two star riders for horse welfare issues. Wensing said that his client did not want to ruin Dujardin’s career, but wanted dressage riders to change how they treated horses.
“If you need to beat a horse like this to do sport,” Wensing said, “it’s not sport anymore.” He added that the video should be “a wake-up call to the dressage world.”
Dujardin said that she would not comment beyond her statement.
The International Federation for Equestrian Sports did not specifically describe the contents of the video in suspending Dujardin but said that it “condemns any conduct contrary to the welfare of horses and has robust rules in place to address such behavior.”
“It is our responsibility and crucial that we address any instances of abuse, as equine welfare cannot be compromised,” said Ingmar De Vos, president of the federation.
Dujardin is one of the most successful athletes in the history of dressage, an event in which horses are judged on how well they perform sets of prescribed movements to music.
She won gold in the individual and the team events at the 2012 Olympics in London aboard a horse named Valegro; she was once again the individual champion and won the team silver at the Rio Games in 2016. After Valegro retired, she switched to a horse named Gio and won bronze in both events at Tokyo in 2021. She had been expected to ride a horse called Imhotep in Paris.
Her six Olympic medals put her in a tie with the cyclist Laura Kenny for the most won by a British woman. In 2017, Dujardin was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire, an honor given to reward people for their achievements.
Her first two gold medals, at age 27, came despite the fact that she had competed for only 18 months at the top level in a sport in which many competitors have 20 years of experience or more.
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