In the heart of the Palace of Versailles, the residence built by Louis XIV, Team GB’s Tom McEwen reached for a royal analogy when question duly came about the horse abuse scandal that has rocked his sport. “I would invite any single one of you to come round and have a look at my yard for an hour, a week, or whatever it took,” said McEwen, who won an Olympic eventing team gold and individual silver medal in Tokyo. “What you see here is the beauty of what happens every single day at home.
These horses are looked after as kings and queens.” The 33-year-old also insisted that he was “shocked” when he saw the video of his Team GB teammate Charlotte Dujardin whipping a horse 24 times – apparently while teaching it the “piaffe”, the slow-motion trot technique dating back to the Renaissance. However it is common to do so by tapping the horse very lightly, to encourage it to lift its legs, not hard with a long stick.
“It’s obviously come to a massive shock for all of us,” he said, after taking an early lead in the three-day eventing competition with just 25.80 penalty points. “But actually I think it’s really important for the rest of us to put a shining light on our amazing sport.
I believe eventing is one of the great sports. We are the triathlon of the horse world. McEwen also promised that Dujardin’s behaviour was not truly reflective of what goes on behind when the cameras are on and no one is looking.
“I can only really speak for eventing,” Mc.