The Paris Olympics Already Has Its First Horse Whipping Scandal

By Kayleigh Donaldson | Miscellaneous | July 24, 2024 |

By Kayleigh Donaldson | Miscellaneous | July 24, 2024 |

The 2024 Olympic Games kick off this week in Paris and the athletes are in France’s capital preparing for the event. It’s the endgame for many athletes, the accumulation of a lifetime of work and a chance to be the greatest in their field. The torch hasn’t even been lit and the scandals are mounting up. Japan sent home one of its gymnasts because she got caught smoking. China’s in the midst of a doping scandal pertaining to their swimming team. The Netherlands sent a full-on child rapist to compete in their volleyball team. Now, we can add a horse-whipping scandal to the pile.

Charlotte Dujardin is a dressage rider and equestrian for Great Britain. She’s been described as one of the true stars of her sport and the face of equestrianism in the UK. With six Olympic medals to her name, she’s also one of the most decorated female Olympians in British history (an honour she shares with cyclist Laura Kenny.) Her return to the Olympics in 2024 was a big story here, a classic comeback narrative after Dujardin had her first baby and was considered a favourite for gold. She’s now out of the Olympics amid what she described as an error of judgement. Said error? Whipping her horse more than 20 times in one minute.

A Dutch sportsperson filed an official complaint against Dujardin with the International Federation for Equestrian Sports (FEI) regarding an event she witnessed four years ago wherein Dujardin whipped a horse ‘24 times […] like an elephant in a circus.’

The Dutch lawyer Stephan Wensing, who is representing the 19-year-old who filed the official complaint against Dujardin, said that his client witnessed Dujardin using a long whip to beat her horse into lifting his legs higher. ‘At that time, my client was thinking this must be normal. She is an Olympic winner. Who am I to doubt? My client asked around and was warned against speaking out in the UK. But last year my client saw others suspended in the UK and elsewhere,’ he said. ‘And this weekend, she eventually made a decision to let me admit the complaint to the FEI and that happened yesterday. The FEI took this immediately very seriously.’

The footage of this incident is now available to watch. The daytime series Good Morning Britain showed the clip on-air today. I won’t include it here because it’s extremely upsetting.

Prior to the footage being released, Dujardin released a statement wherein she said, ‘What happened was completely out of character and does not reflect how I train my horses or coach my pupils, however there is no excuse. I am deeply ashamed and should have set a better example in that moment.’ She is now ineligible to participate in the Paris 2024 games.

It’s all a horribly tragic and gross experience. Animal abuse is inexcusable, and equestrianism is already a sport overwhelmed with both alleged and confirmed incidents of horses being beaten in the name of ‘discipline’ (and that doesn’t even get into the mess of professional horse racing.) Dujardin may claim this was a one-off error on her part but I don’t think whipping a horse repeatedly and with specific intent in this manner seems like an of-the-moment oopsie. The footage sure makes it seem like this is a thing she does all the time.

The footage is from four years ago, and someone’s been sitting on it for a long time, only to lodge the complaint right as the Olympics take place. It’s weird, right? How many more times since that incident has that horse been potentially whipped? Did they care about that enough to talk to someone earlier?

Frankly, this moment of shame should put the entire sport into the spotlight, because you just know it’s not one person doing this. The horse world is a notoriously monied place, a world where these animals are multi-million-dollar investments that make already rich people even richer. How much cash is on the line when it comes to something like Charlotte Dujardin whipping an animal into submission?

Britain’s equestrian team has replaced Dujardin with a reserve rider. They still plan to compete.