Charlotte Dujardin could have become Britain’s most decorated female Olympian in Paris. Instead, the dressage star has pulled out due to an “error of judgement”.
The 39-year-old became one of the stars of London 2012 following double gold on Valegro, trained by her Olympic teammate and mentor Carl Hester, who will compete at his seventh Games in France.
Dujardin retained her individual title on the same horse in Rio four years later and won team silver, adding two bronze medals in Tokyo in 2021, this time on Gio. That took her to six Olympic medals — level with British cycling great Laura Kenny, an achievement she described to AFP as a “wow moment”.
But Dujardin will not get the chance to overtake Kenny in Paris after pulling out of the Olympics, citing an “error of judgement during a coaching session” in a video from four years ago. The International Federation for Equestrian Sports (FEI) said it was investigating after it received a video “depicting Ms Dujardin engaging in conduct contrary to the principles of horse welfare”.
Dujardin, whose mother competed in showjumping, caught the riding bug early, first clambering onto a horse aged two. She later bought her first horse thanks to an inheritance from her grandmother but it was Hester who persuaded her to take up dressage.
Their bond was formed when Dujardin showed up at his picturesque stables in Gloucestershire, southwest England, in 2007.
After just 10 days Hester offered her a groom’s job but such was her progress that he joked to AFP: “I have gone from being the boss to working for Charlotte.” The pair were good for each other — Dujardin is self-avowedly “ambitious and single-minded” while Hester told her to “calm down and not be so hard on herself”.
Dujardin’s success in London propelled her into a limelight rarely enjoyed by dressage riders and gave the sport a profile it had yearned for for years. “I have had emails asking about how to get started,” she said. “I have even had people say I am their hero and cry when they meet me.
“So absolutely it did a lot for the sport.
“After London 2012 they always asked ‘Are you the girl on the dancing horse?’ And men approaching me in pubs ask me ‘Do you make the horse do that or does the horse do it?’.
“Men who aren’t even horsey watched it and got inspired by it.”
However, the highs also came with lows as she revealed in her 2018 autobiography “The Girl on the Dancing Horse”, in which she outlined her struggles with mental health issues.
“Depression was not something I’d ever really understood,” she wrote, saying she wanted to “hurt herself because she felt such pain”. She said she punished herself by not eating, losing nearly two stones (nearly 13 kilograms) in weight. After American superstar gymnast Simone Biles’s public struggles at the Tokyo Games, Dujardin opened up to AFP about her own issues with mental health.
“It is hard being successful,” said the dressage star, who also fractured her skull in 2009.
“It is a hard place to be with the pressure and the expectation. Those are quite hard things to have on your shoulders all the time.” Dujardin has faced further challenges, including the end of a 13-year relationship with her fiance Dean Golding in 2019.
“I have to say having the right people around you supporting you gets you through,” she said.
“You just have to make sure you never get to the point of no turning back.
“I am talking about ending your career, not anything else, and that you feel you cannot do it any more. But with the right people it can help to prevent that.”