“The girl on the dancing horse.” This was the title Charlotte Dujardin gave her memoir, and it was a reputation that preceded her everywhere she went. When she performed at one 2015 exhibition in Las Vegas on Valegro, the Dutch warmblood with which she elevated dressage to its highest artistic expression, newly converted fans queued out of the door for her autograph.
In less than a week, that luminous reputation has been torched. Today, she might just be the girl who brings down her sport . While equestrianism is confirmed for the Los Angeles Olympics in 2028, there are grave doubts as to whether dressage will form part of its programme.
This is a constituency under mounting pressure to sustain the “social licence” to use horses for sport, and the video of Dujardin whipping one 24 times marks a grave setback for that cause. Reactions to animal abuse in an Olympic context are visceral and immediate. In August 2021, Kim Raisner, a German coach in modern pentathlon, was filmed punching a horse in Tokyo.
Three months later, the sport’s governing body ruled that horse riding should no longer be one of its five disciplines. The downfall of Dujardin has unleashed an even fiercer backlash. Even her long-time mentor Carl Hester, the British team captain, has co-signed a letter condemning her.
She was meant to be on a quest here at the Palace of Versailles, a suitably opulent setting for a sport of billionaires, to become the most decorated British female Olympian in history .