The shocking video that shows Olympic champ whipping horse ‘like an elephant in the circus’

Warning: graphic content

Charlotte Dujardin, Britain’s three-time Olympic equestrian champion, has been shown repeatedly striking a horse on the back of the legs with a whip in distressing footage.

The leading dressage star, who could have become the country’s most decorated female Olympian, has been banned from the Paris Games over the video, in which her treatment of the horse has been likened to whipping an “elephant in the circus”.

Britain’s Charlotte Dujardin has withdrawn from the Paris Games after a video emerged that she says shows her behaving inappropriately while coaching other riders.Credit: AP

Dujardin can be seen using the whip repeatedly on a horse she is training. The full video is alleged to show Dujardin striking the animal 24 times.

Dujardin is understood to be teaching the horse the ‘piaffe’, the slow-motion trot technique dating back to the renaissance. But those giving instruction in the piaffe typically do so by tapping the horse very lightly, just to encourage it to lift its legs.

Dujardin admitted she made an “error of judgment” during a coaching session involving a 19-year-old rider in Gloucestershire. The 39-year-old immediately stood down from Team GB before being provisionally suspended for six months by equestrian’s governing body, the FEI.

She said she was “deeply ashamed” on learning that the footage had been sent to authorities.

‘I just don’t understand how she got into that situation’

Reacting to the release of the video, former eventer and current ITV Racing presenter Alice Plunkett said: “It’s not a video that makes anybody feel comfortable watching, it is not appropriate and it is not something that I’ve ever seen in terms of the years that I’ve been working with horses.

“It’s not standard practice. That is not a standard way of training your horses for top-level dressage, she knows that and I just don’t understand how she got into that situation because she’s somebody who has made her life from horses.

“She’s made her life from horses because she manages them in a way that they work for her. Valegro would not have performed in the way that he did for her if she was treating him like that.

“She’s in a systematic training session, she’s training someone else’s horse in that video and she’s made the wrong decision in how to solve the problem. It is not acceptable.”

Plunkett added: “People may think that [the ban] isn’t enough, but in terms of reacting to it, she’s taken herself out of the Olympic Games before the sanction came through.”

The Telegraph, London

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