Charlotte Dujardin: Multiple sponsors cut ties with British Olympian over whipping video

15 comments

1. I think the whole sport needs investigating, it’s blatant

   someone said those whips she used were not supposed to hit the horse, the horse is just supposed to know automatically.

   yea that’s not how it works anyone with a brain cell can see that

2. “The British-owned company said it hopes coverage of the story “can be a force for greater good and improve horse welfare in the future”.”

   Presumably the only real way to do this is just to let them be horses and not merely tools for humans to use. Live in a field, eat grass, do horse stuff.

3. Her career is over. The question is how many others get taken down with her.

4. I hope that this is only the start of investigations into this awful woman and the equally awful wider sport. IIRC the video shows Dujardin saying something to the effect of ‘This whip is shit. It doesn’t allow me to hit her really hard.’ implying that these kinds of beatings were a regular occurrence and not a one-off as she claimed. It makes sense. It’s incredibly hard to believe that the one time she was caught on camera also happened to be the one and only time it had ever happened. I suspect this was Dujardin’s regular MO, and doubtless rife among other trainers and riders too.

   And it stands to reason: you’ve got to be a particular kind of person to get pleasure from bending a sentient creature to your will and forcing it to ferry you about and prance up and down a sand-filled shoebox for a pretty spectacle. I’d suggest that that same person is not going to have many qualms about using violence to enforce it.

5. Horses skin is thinner than human skin.. so imagine how much it hurts too. The whole of equine sports needs investigating.

6. I don’t see these horse events surviving in the olympics long term. 

   They look outdated, and it must push the hosting costs up quite a bit. 

7. Can we just fuck dressage off, full stop. It’s blatantly not a sport, it’s just a load of poshos doing naff all, prancing around on their family horse called ‘Ballywally Kill The Poor’ or something equally as twee. Who fucking cares.

8. How that’s even an olympic sport baffles me. Get it to fuck

9. I wouldnt be surprised if all riders do this to their horses, she’s just one who got caught.

10. She’s just the tip of a rather large iceberg I’d imagine.

    Barbaric.

11. Oh she lost Fairfax saddles as a sponsor.

    I wonder where they think the leather for their saddles comes from?

12. Madness this world we live in, I totally accept she’s wrong for this but there is a certified Loverboy certified pedophile playing volleyball for the Dutch

13. Usual hypocrisy. Nobody is really surprised of this. But now the video is viral, so we have to pretend to be.

14. You ever wonder why posh Brits win all the show jumping stuff? It’s because they enjoy being sadistic.

15. She was fine with someone recording her doing it it is obviously the norm and I hope sport gets banned and am also glad she can’t now beat Laura Kenny’s record a proper olympian