Charlotte Dujardin Returns to Competition

Last week Charlotte Dujardin returned to competing after finishing her 1-year ban for abusing a horse that she was training. But what does her situation say about competitive dressage?

Dujardin’s is not an isolated case. Carina Cassøe Kruth was dropped from the Paris Olympic squad for whipping her horse in a training session with Andreas Helgstrand. Helgstrand himself had a 15-month ban for horse abuse and is now back on the Danish team. The list goes on.

The FEI are responsible for maintaining the correct standards of the sport and preventing horses from suffering physical or mental harm, yet the only riders or trainers who receive any kind of punishment are those who hit the headlines and receive public condemnation. Bans and fines are implemented, but once the ban is over, the rider starts competing again and everything continues as before.

In response to public concern, the Danish Equestrian Federation are bringing in new rules to ban double bridles below level 4 (advanced medium). They will seek to have this rule implemented globally. This misses the main problem, what is being trained and how it is being judged.

If the judges cannot see when a horse is moving incorrectly, riders and coaches will continue to train badly executed movements. Some years ago, I watched lessons given by a well-known senior judge where teeth grinding, tail swishing and a horse kicking up at the rider’s legs were dismissed as normal.

Listening to the commentary from the Olympic games last year, this blindness to the state of riding at the highest level persists. Lavish praise was given for uneven piaffes, hollow rein back steps, extended trot without lengthened strides etc. This riding has now become so normalised, that many aspiring riders are oblivious to the damage that this is doing to horses.

Dujardin’s experience will not prevent the abuse. Dressage riders will simply stop people from recording training sessions so that they don’t get caught out.
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Dressage judges, and those who sit on the committees that govern the sport at national and international level. have a duty to fully understand correct movements and training of dressage horses. Until they have the courage to admit to the huge problems that they have allowed to be perpetuated in competitive dressage, nothing will change.

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​Training Riders, Transforming Horses
© Diane Followell