Dressage at make-or-break point after video shows Olympian abusing horse

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PARIS – Dressage, a centuries-old equine art form evoking images of class, nobility and precision, arrived at the Paris Games in the midst of an existential crisis few outside the sport would have known about.

It began late last year when an undercover documentary filmmaker exposed prominent Danish dressage rider and billionaire horse dealer Andreas Helgstrand for abusive training practices, showing horses with spur wounds and whip marks.

That led to February, when videos began to surface online of a former American Olympian, Cesar Parra, whipping horses and engaging in a practice called “rollkur,” a now-banned technique that uses force to teach a horse how to bend its neck in an uncomfortable and unnatural way.

“Then the floodgates opened,” one high-level dressage competitor told USA TODAY Sports, speaking on the condition of anonymity in order to be candid about the state of the industry without risking retribution.

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Soon, more disturbing videos started popping up on social media. Allegations of horse abuse and mistreatment were submitted to governing bodies. Prominent voices from within began urging the International Federation for Equestrian Sport (FEI) to take decisive action, warning that the perception of systemic cruelty could lead to dressage being thrown out of the Olympic Games.

And then, just as athletes began arriving in Paris, another bombshell dropped: A former student of British three-time gold medalist Charlotte Dujardin blew the whistle, turning in a 2-year-old video that showed Dujardin repeatedly using a long instrument called a lunge whip while the horse recoiled and tried to avoid getting hit.

“What happened was completely out of character and does not reflect how I train my horses or coach my pupils,” Dujardin wrote in a statement after withdrawing from the Olympics on Tuesday. “However there is no excuse.”

For an industry already on edge, and for which the Olympics represents a rare opportunity to perform in front of a large national audience, the timing couldn’t have been worse and the shockwaves couldn’t have been bigger. When asked to compare Dujardin’s prominence to an athlete in another sport, the competitor who spoke on the condition of anonymity said it would be fair to call her the LeBron James of dressage.

To have someone of Dujardin’s stature caught up in an abuse scandal – especially at a time when animal rights activists have targeted all sports that involve humans on horseback – could either be the ultimate wake-up call or the tipping point that eventually leads to dressage being removed from the Olympic program.

It’s no secret now that the stakes are high.

A few days before the Dujardin allegations became public, the FEI announced its new “Be a Guardian” initiative, putting forth an action plan and a commitment of more than $1 million to not just codify more specific standards of equine care but transform the mindset of those in the sport.

“In the past we always spoke about partnership (between human and horse), but it’s not a partnership,” FEI president Ingmar De Vos said this week. “In a partnership, you are both equal. But you should be the guardian of the horse; you’re not the partner. You need to take care.”

The microscope turning toward dressage and other international equestrian sports, of course, is an outgrowth of trends we have seen around Thoroughbred racing in the U.S. At some point, the sport’s gatekeepers whose instinct may be to downplay or ignore problematic behavior or treatment of horses can no longer run from the deluge of public pressure brought about by a combination of activists, the widespread sharing of incidents on social media and general distaste in modern society for anything that looks like animal suffering.

In American horse racing, it has finally led to significant change in the form of HISA (Horseracing Integrity and Safety Authority), a federally authorized regulatory body with broad power over issues like drug testing and racetrack maintenance.

The question for dressage, much like Thoroughbred racing, is whether its sudden turn toward reform has come too late.

“The footage is alarming when you see it, and when you combine it with the other high-profile incidents that have been coming out, it definitely suggests there may be underlying issues in dressage training practices that warrant more scrutiny for sure,” said Chelsea Perez, who has spent much of her life competing in dressage and is the senior program manager of equine protection at The Humane Society of the United States.

“I know that in the beginning when some of these complaints were coming forward, there were concerns that they were not being taken seriously. The FEI and other governing bodies of the sport seem to be more willing now.”

What is dressage?

For those who aren’t familiar with dressage, the simplest comparison might be to figure skating. During a competition, a specifically bred horse is required to perform a series of tests and movements that increase in difficulty. In the freestyle portion, the horse performs choreographed patterns of movement synched to a medley of songs. Every element is judged from 0 to 10 by a panel of experts looking for specific things like technique, balance and artistry.

Getting a horse ready for a dressage competition, particularly at the top-end Grand Prix level, would typically take seven years of careful training and muscular development just to reach that stage, and then another three or four after that to reach their peak. The ideal age for a horse at the Olympics, for instance, would be around 12 to 15. These horses typically live to around 25 or 30 years old.

“People have said historically that it’s a little bit like watching cement set,” Perez said. “It’s a long, methodical process.”

But over time, demand grew for competitive levels below the Grand Prix where younger horses – which were continually being bred more scientifically and valued more highly by buyers – could start to pay off earlier.

“The prices have gone nuts,” the competitor who wished to remain anonymous said. “It’s not out of the realm of possibility to spend $100,000 on a horse that is barely under saddle. In racehorse terms that’s nothing, but in the sport world, that’s a lot. The people who have the money to buy these things also tend to be people who are very results-driven. They want to see the prizes and the return on investment.”

The tension between traditional dressage, which was undertaken purely as a hobby, and a competitive sport with incentives toward horses being bred with more athletic traits and a faster development track, has invariably led to changes in the way they are trained.

Some might call them shortcuts, and some of those shortcuts could indeed involve training tools like whips or spurs. When used in the manner Dujardin did on video, though – repeatedly and aggressively, ostensibly to motivate the horse to pick up its legs higher or to train it to be more expressive – the line into abuse has been crossed.

But it’s not always easy to see where that line is, particularly for the layman. People who work with horses would argue some of these tools – when applied with precision and care − are not only appropriate to use in training a horse, they’re necessary.

It’s worth remembering, after all, that these are 1,200-pound animals who are rough and aggressive and even dangerous when not taught certain behaviors. They need to be disciplined and made to be a bit submissive in a way, just so they can be safely in the company of human beings, much less perform in a sport like dressage. And what if one ugly incident caught on camera isn’t systemic but rather just one moment of frustration, like a parent losing patience with a disobedient toddler and yelling too loudly in the middle of a crowded mall? Where do you draw the line?  

That is often where people who live in the horse world and care about the animals deeply become defensive when those peering in from the outside are critical. More scrutiny from untrained eyes can breed misunderstanding of the line between what’s acceptable and what’s not. At the same time, one highly publicized incident of abuse usually leads to another coming to light. A look under the hood becomes a feeding frenzy and full-blown crisis, with no solution other than a head-on confrontation of the problem.

This leads to, as the competitor who wished to remain anonymous said, a sport like dressage becoming at risk of losing its social license to operate. It’s why a governing body like the FEI might truly be facing a make-or-break moment.

Everything’s on the table. From establishing clear lines on acceptable training methods with the help of behavioral scientists, to drug testing, to giving competition officials more latitude to raise red flags if a horse shows signs of distress in its warm-up, the sport is promising change. It has little choice but to deliver.

“One of the most important things is the understanding that we need to be the guardian of the sport and everybody has a responsibility,” said Sabrina Ibanez, the FEI’s secretary general. “Now we have a more holistic view of what needs to be further addressed.”

‘Such cruelty is unacceptable’

It’s unclear why the whistleblower waited two years to expose Dujardin, choosing to release the video for maximum impact a few days before the opening ceremony.

Perhaps it was merely a natural end point to the critical mass of recent abuse allegations, or maybe other motivations were in play. (Though there’s no evidence to support it, some conversation taking place within the sport this week centers on a perceived link between the whistleblower’s Dutch attorney and Dujardin’s withdrawal potentially improving the Netherlands’ chances of winning a medal.)

De Vos, the FEI president, said he was both alarmed by the video and disappointed it wasn’t turned in until two years later.

“It’s probably not a coincidence this is coming to us just at the eve of the Olympic Games, but it strengthens my belief we are doing the right thing,” he said. “It clearly illustrates that this plan that we have now created and philosophy of ‘Be a Guardian’ is really what we need.”

What’s mystifying, though, is that Dujardin is one of the last people in the sport who would have been suspected of such a violation.

When dressage experts look for signs of mistreatment, it’s not just obvious wounds or scarring but things that would be easily recognizable to experts, like tension in the mouth or a discolored tongue or sending stress signals with their tail. These were not the hallmarks of Dujardin’s horses.

“If five days ago you’d have asked me who are the best trainers in the world, I’d have said Charlotte not only because she’s good but because her horses are happy athletes,” the competitor who wished to remain anonymous said. “The horses she’s been successful on don’t show those problems.’

Still, everyone around the sport would agree that what Dujardin did on film was categorically unacceptable. Maybe she did just lose her head for a minute. But why didn’t she stop when such an experienced trainer would have known she was going over the line? Nobody has a good answer for that.

“Such cruelty is unacceptable under any circumstance and affirms the need for meaningful welfare standards to protect horses,” Perez said. “Whistleblowers are key in exposing these abuses, and we commend their courage.”

Whether the video of Dujardin repeatedly cracking a long whip at an obviously frightened horse was systemic or out of character, as she claimed in her statement, almost doesn’t matter at this point. Nor do the motivations of the whistleblower.

When the Olympic dressage competition gets underway Saturday in the shadow of idyllic Versailles Palace, the entire sport is now a target, lumped in – fairly or not – with controversies surrounding Thoroughbred breakdowns or the cruel “horse soring” method that has been associated with the exaggerated gait of Tennessee walking horses.  

That makes these Olympics an incredibly fraught moment for dressage, an event that typically appeals to a niche audience but will now have the eyes of the world upon it for all the wrong reasons, with any further revelation or transgression adding fuel to the fire.

As the competitor who wished to remain anonymous said: “We’re all going to have to be on our best behavior for awhile.”