PARIS (AP) — Equestrian star Isabell Werth is campaigning for better horse protection at the Olympic Games in Paris.
But even she was upset when attention was repeatedly shifted from the competition to the banned riders.
After the video scandal involving Charlotte Dujardin, which dominated the coverage of the sport in the run-up to the Games in Paris, Werth and other riders spoke out loudly that a profound cultural change was needed in equestrian sport to put an end to violence against horses.
British rider Carl Hester even went so far as to say that the survival of the sport at the Olympic Games was at stake.
Werth won a gold and a silver medal in Paris, extending her equestrian record to 14 Olympic medals – including eight gold – all in dressage.
Werth, 55, raised the issue of horse welfare again on Sunday after the end of her competitions, when the video of three-time Olympic dressage champion Dujardin whipping her horse’s legs was still the topic of conversation.
“We’ve seen some really bad videos, we all know that, and we need to be aware of that. And the most important thing is that we all have a really open mind, we need to be,” Werth said. “If something goes wrong, we need to stop it immediately. That’s a responsibility of all of us. If we love the sport and want to keep it going, we need to do that.”
When the equestrian competitions began last week, horse welfare was immediately brought to the forefront when Brazilian rider Carlos Parro received a yellow card for possibly causing “unnecessary discomfort” to his horse Safira. This happened ahead of the Games.
The warning to Parro was issued after equestrian sport’s governing body, the FEI, received photos from animal rights group PETA. One photo showed Parro hyperextending Safira’s neck in a move called “rollkur” – which affects the horse’s breathing and, according to PETA, can damage the horse’s spine and cause suffering.
Werth’s horse
The equestrian links run deep. At the Paris Games, Werth rode a horse named Wendy. She purchased Wendy in January from the stables of Andreas Helgstrand, an Olympic bronze medalist on the dressage team with Denmark at the 2008 Games.
Helgstrand is suspended until December 31 after a documentary entitled “Operation X: Secrets of the Horse Billionaire” was broadcast on Danish channel TV 2 last November, which described the mistreatment of horses at his training facility.
An undercover reporter posed as a groom to secretly film inside the facility, claiming the horses had deep cuts and whip marks. The documentary alleges that grooms hid the cuts – which were caused by the metal spurs on the riders’ boots – with shoe polish and covered whip marks with blankets to hide them from potential customers.
The suspension by the Danish Equestrian Federation, against which Helgstrand did not appeal, also prohibits him from training students. The FEI also suspended him.
After the second day of the dressage test event in Versailles last Wednesday, a Danish reporter asked Werth for comment on Helgstrand’s suspension.
She resisted.
“I’m not discussing that here. No more Charlotte, no more Andreas, no more Parro, nothing more. Everything has been said,” said Werth. “I got a fantastic mare, a very great, beloved mare, and I got other great horses from Helgstrand Dressage, so there’s nothing more to discuss.”
In January, Werth thanked Helgstrand “for making this partnership possible” with Wendy.
“I am very proud and grateful to welcome this outstanding horse as a new addition to my stable,” Werth said on the Helgstrand Dressage website.
Later that month, Werth taught a master class at Helgstrand Dressage USA in Wellington, Florida, and rode Helgstrand’s horses at Windsome Farm.
The TV-2 documentary did not indicate that Wendy had suffered any harm at Helgstrand’s facility.
Dujardin Fallout
Dujardin was believed to be one of the medal favorites in dressage, in which horse and rider perform set movements in an arena for several minutes.
One of the most famous movements is a trotting technique called piaffe, in which each diagonal pair of legs is alternately lifted and brought back to the ground in a sort of jumping motion. Piaffe became more popular when the video of Dujardin’s horsewhip surfaced.
Dujardin has been heavily criticized, including by 57-year-old Hester, who has known her for 17 years and signed a letter from the International Dressage Riders Club condemning her actions.
Touchdowns Painface
The Swedish dressage rider Patrik Kittel, who competed in Paris, was investigated for excessive use of rollkur.
The FEI examined him at a competition in October 2009, where he used it for an extended period of time on his horse Scandic.
Kittel was exonerated, but received a warning and the information that his actions were being monitored.
Earlier this year, the website of Swedish newspaper Sportbladet published photos of Kittel at a World Cup event in Amsterdam, where Touchdown’s tongue appeared to turn blue as it lolled out.
The tense facial expression of a horse when it is suffering is known in equestrian circles as the “pain face.”
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AP Olympics: https://apnews.com/hub/2024-paris-olympic-games
