In the heart of the palace of Versailles, the residence built by Louis XIV, Team GB’s Tom McEwen reached for a royal analogy when the horse abuse scandal that has rocked his sport flared up again on the opening day of these Games.
“I would invite any single one of you to have a look at my yard for an hour, a week, or whatever it took,” he said, after a decent first day’s work at the three-day eventing. “These horses are looked after as kings and queens.”
It was a message reinforced by another British equestrian star, Laura Collett, after she broke the Olympic record for the lowest dressage score with 17.50 to move into the gold medal position, as Team GB scored 66.70 overall, also an Olympic record.
“It’s been devastating news,” she said, referring to the emergence of a video showing Charlotte Dujardin whipping a horse 24 times. “But we very much just want to show everyone what our horses mean to us. It’s my life. I love these horses and I love working with them.”
Collett’s story is as remarkable as anyone’s in Paris. In 2013, a horse landed on top of her, which led to her having to be resuscitated five times, being in a coma for six days, and left blind in one eye. Now she is in a good position to win individual and team gold for Team GB – thanks to her relationship with her horse London 52.
“When the judges told me that we got to 10 for harmony – I think that’s the key thing,” she said. “We work together day in, day out.”
Asked how she encouraged him to perform so beautifully, she replied: “He’s a horse that is actually very shy. You don’t build those partnerships in five minutes or 10 minutes. It’s years and years of hard work, and getting the horse to trust you.”
Now Collett goes into the cross country, ready to push on. Unlike many riders she wears goggles because she would not be able to see if a fly went into her good eye. But she insists she is not worried.
“I don’t think about it because there’s no other option than to carry on,” she says. “It’s amazing how quickly the body adapted.
“Depth perception was very difficult to begin with. But it was the only thing I wanted to do – get back on and ride horses. You have to find a way. For me, it’s normal now to only have one eye. I might be better if I had two, but you never know.”
Meanwhile McEwen insisted that he was “shocked” when he saw the video of Dujardin whipping a horse 24 times – apparently while teaching it the “piaffe”, the slow-motion trot technique dating back to the Renaissance.
It is common to tap the horse very lightly, to encourage it to lift its legs, not hard with a long stick while coaching the move. However McEwen urged people to also remember that his former GB teammate was human too.
“We are 110% behind horse welfare,” he said. ”And these horses are looked after incredibly. I definitely don’t condone Charlotte’s behaviour. But she has put her hands up to it and she’s owned it.
“And realistically it’s for the courts, the process, and the people to decide what punishment she should be getting for her actions. At the end of it she is a human being as well.”
McEwen also promised that having equestrian thrust on to the front pages in the build-up to these Olympics had not affected Team GB’s preparations. “To be honest it is all focused,” he said. “It was a complete shock to begin with. We weren’t expecting it at all. But realistically we’ve come here to do our job.”
His view was backed by one British fan in Versailles, Sam Fletcher, from Wiltshire. “I just think the vast majority of people like us – amateur riders – would just never do anything like that,” she said. “We look after our horses better than we do our kids. I’ve never seen a horse being whipped like that.”
But Fletcher also admitted she was worried that her sport was facing an existential threat. “Yet there’s so many incredible things about it, not least that women and men compete together,” she added.
