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Good Morning Britain presenter Charlotte Hawkins has said she was “really shocked” after watching a video of Olympic dressage rider Charlotte Dujardin whipping a horse 24 times.
Three-time Olympic champion Dujardin, 39, who was expected to be one of the stars of Team GB this year, was banned from the Paris Games after she was criticised for mistreating the horse.
The International Federation for Equestrian Sports (FEI) has said that the Olympian’s conduct contradicted standards of horse welfare and announced it had provisionally suspended the rider for six months.
Speaking on Wednesday morning’s instalment of the breakfast show, Hawkins, who is an equestrian enthusiast who also presents ITV’s horseracing coverage, said that the video will be “distressing” for people to see.
During the episode, GMB aired the footage exclusively for the first time, which showed Dujardin whipping the horse while a student was riding in the saddle.
“I was really shocked when I saw this video and it will be distressing for people to see it. For a horse to be whipped that number of times, 24 times, and in my experience you just wouldn’t do this,” she explained.
Hawkins said, from her experience of horse riding, the type of whip seen in the video is rarely used directly on the horse, explaining that FEI advises using a whip only to “give the horse a light tap so it knows [the whip] is there”.
She explained: “Usually when you have a lunging whip like this, it’s used in training, but you usually have it so the horse knows you have it but you don’t use it, in my experience, but if you do, you would normally hit the ground or hit something around the horse.
“It’s for the noise and the fact that you have it,” she added.
Alice Plunkett, a former eventer and currently working as a presenter on ITV Racing said on Good Morning Britain: “It’s not a video that makes anyone feel comfortable watching it and it’s not a video that I’ve ever seen in terms of the years that I’ve been working with horses and it’s not standard practice.”
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“That is not a standard way of training horses for top-level dressage, she knows that and I just don’t understand how she got into that situation because she’s somebody who has made her life from horses.
“She’s in systematic training sessions, she’s training somebody else’s horse in that training video and she’s made the wrong decision in how to solve a problem and she’s come up with – it is not acceptable what you’re seeing here.”
Before the Olympics banned the athlete, Dujardin earlier withdrew from all competitions due to a video that shows her “making an error of judgement during a coaching session” to a young rider four years ago.
Stephan Wensing, a lawyer representing the 19-year-old who filed the complaint against Dujardin, said the incident took place when the 39-year-old was telling the student to lift up the legs of the horse.
He told The Telegraph: “She took the long whip and she was beating the horse more than 24 times in one minute.” He added: “It was like an elephant in the circus.”
The FEI said in a statement that Dujardin fully cooperated with their investigaton, admitting she is the individual in the video and acknowledging her conduct was inappropriate before withdrawing from the Olympics. Dujardian said in a statement that she is “deeply ashamed” and the incident “was completely out of character and does not reflect how I train my horses or coach my pupils”.
She continued: “I am sincerely sorry for my actions and devastated that I have let everyone down, including Team GB, fans and sponsors.
“I will cooperate fully with the FEl, British Equestrian Federation and British Dressage during their investigations, and will not be commenting further until the process is complete.”
The Olympics opening ceremony is on Friday while the dressage competition at Paris 2024 is scheduled to begin on 30 July, at the Chateau de Versailles.
A medal of any colour would put Dujardin ahead of cyclist Laura Kenny as Britain’s most decorated female Olympian, with the pair currently tied on six medals.
