Charlotte Dujardin withdraws from Paris Olympic Games over video of her whipping her horse's legs

Charlotte Dujardin, a three-time Olympic equestrian champion from Britain, has been shown hitting a horse on its legs with a whip in a troubling video.

Dujardin, who could have become the most decorated female Olympian in Britain, has been banned from the Paris Games due to the video, which compared her actions to whipping an “elephant in the circus.”

Britain’s Charlotte Dujardin has pulled out of the Paris Games after a video showed her behaving badly while coaching other riders. Credit: AP

In the video, Dujardin is seen using the whip on a horse she is training. The full video reportedly shows her hitting the horse 24 times.

Dujardin was teaching the horse the ‘piaffe’, a slow-motion trot technique. Normally, trainers lightly tap the horse to encourage it to lift its legs.

Dujardin admitted she made a “mistake” during a coaching session with a 19-year-old rider in Gloucestershire. She stepped down from Team GB and was temporarily suspended for six months by the equestrian’s governing body, the FEI.

She said she was “deeply ashamed” when she learned that the video had been sent to authorities.

Reacting to the release of the video, former eventer and current ITV Racing presenter Alice Plunkett said: “It’s not a video that makes anyone feel comfortable. It is not appropriate and it is not something I’ve seen in the years I’ve been working with horses.

“It’s not standard practice. That is not a normal way of training horses for top-level dressage. She knows that, and I don’t understand how she got into that situation because she has made her life with horses.

“She has succeeded with horses because she manages them well. Valegro wouldn’t have performed as he did if she treated him like that.

“In the video, she’s in a training session with someone else’s horse and made the wrong choice in solving the problem. It is not acceptable.”

Plunkett added: “People may think that the ban isn’t enough, but she took herself out of the Olympic Games before the sanction came through.”