Hester opens Olympic bid still reeling from ‘huge shock’ of Dujardin video

Charlotte Dujardin has “paid very heavily” after a video emerged of her whipping a horse 24 times in a minute , her longtime mentor and former teammate Carl Hester said on Tuesday. Hester, who competed in the opening day of the dressage event on Tuesday, said the leaked filmed video of the six-time Olympic medallist taken during a training session four years ago was a shock to him.

“That video is fairly obvious and nobody’s going to support that, you can’t,” he said. “But my personal opinion of Charlotte over 17 years – I have not seen that.”

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Hester, who was the youngest British rider when he rode in Barcelona in 1992 and is now the oldest in the team in Paris at 57, will ride alongside fellow Tokyo 2020 bronze medallist Lottie Fry and Dujardin’s replacement, Becky Moody. Qualifying rounds for dressage take place on Tuesday and Wednesday, with finals on Saturday and Sunday.

Moody came top of her qualifying group with 74.938%, on her horse Jagerbomb, which she bred herself and named after her favourite alcoholic drink. “I think we both went in there a little bit nervous and apprehensive, but we helped each other out,” she said.

When asked about the Dujardin video, Moody said it had made her sad. “It’s not a reflection of our sport, but also, for me, it’s not a reflection of what I know about Charlotte,” she said. “I think that everybody just has to remember the human in this situation.”

Dujardin, who started out as a groom in Hester’s stables in Gloucestershire in 2007, was kicked out of the Olympics and suspended for six months by the sport’s governing body. UK Sport suspended her Lottery funding.

Dujardin – winner of gold medals in the individual and team dressage in London 2012, gold and silver in Rio, and two bronze medals in Tokyo – said what had happened was “completely out of character” and did not “reflect how I train my horses or coach my pupils, however there is no excuse”.

Hester, who totted up a respectable score of 77.345% on Fame, which will probably take him to the finals on Sunday, gave a candid interview after his first outing at Paris 2024 in the qualifying round.

Visibly emotional, he said the video was a “huge shock” to him, adding that it had not been filmed in his stables and he did not know about its existence before it emerged. Asked how his protege was, he said he had not seen her but it had been “very difficult” for her.

“I’ve known her for 17 years. She’s a mum, she has a small child,” he said. “She’s paid very heavily for this in a way that you just wouldn’t believe. She will have to accept what the FEI [the equestrian governing body] gives her and she will but I just hope she’s strong enough to be able to come back from that.”

Hester was one of 10 board members of the International Dressage Riders Club to sign a letter “universally condemning” Dujardin for abusing her horse and supporting the decision to suspend her. The horseman, who is competing in his seventh Olympics and is seen as the godfather of British dressage, said the scandal had to be a lesson for everyone in the equestrian world.

“This is four years ago, people do make mistakes and what do we do? We never forgive people for the things that happen in life?” he said. “Right now, it’s going to be a long road for her and a lesson, for everybody really, in the horse world. We’ve got to put the horses first and show that.”

The fallout from the video continues to have repercussions on the sport, with fears in the equestrian world that dressage could be axed as future Games look to slim down the number of events. Modern pentathlon has scrapped its equestrian element for the Los Angeles Games in 2028 after it was heavily criticised in Tokyo when a German coach punched a horse after it refused to jump.

Asked about the team’s chances after the departure of Dujardin – who had hoped to become Great Britain’s most decorated female Olympian, Hester said: “We’ve got to fight for any medal now. Any medal, but we’ve got three great horses. So I’m hopeful and I know the girls are excited about it.”