Absolutely agree with this. The mum of my “bestie” from school years was a top level dressage coach in SA and that world was evil, vindictive and bitchy beyond all imagination. It’s no surprise these things surface from there.
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I looked at two Reddit links on this last night. The first was the general Oly Reddit sub and the comments were scathing as you’d expect.
The second ( which I had no idea existed) was the Dressage sub. The attitude couldn’t have been more different.
Lots of ‘we’ve all had bad days’ type thing. Also, ‘ I haven’t seen the footage but’ ….,.
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Lauren Steadman has trained with our club recently; she’s an absolute fish in the water!
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The video was on ITV this morning.
On one hand it wasn’t as bad as I’d feared. She was whipping the horses legs to make it jump/trot, no kicking, punching or anything but still clearly unacceptable, I’m not trying to defend it in anyway.
The worst thing for me was that she didn’t appear angry, the horse wasn’t acting up or anything like that. It looked like a completely normal day at the office which makes me think this is completely normal behaviour (for her) rather than a moment of anger etc.
The Dutch lawyer also said she had been seen doing it multiple times but there was only the one video.
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I would guess that any sort of animal training where you are trying to get an animal to do something that is completely unnatural to it will involve an element of cruelty (and/or lots of treats ).
It’s not as if you can have a reasoned conversation with the horse about what you want it to do and why
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I have no idea of anything horsey, but i guess “cruelty” is more normal than anyone from the outside knows. Theres a local Greyhound charity that i came across at a local fete just because there were a few lovely dogs hanging around. They rehouse unwanted racing dogs. I had never thought about it but once their days are done, ie crap or too old, the dogs are “dumped” and many have no house training or ability to interact around humans, past trainer/athlete, they dont like petting, have set meal times just very isolated and lonely. They take a lot of work. Really sad.
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It was to get the horse to do a higher piaffe wasn’t it?
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Moving on - Olympics events start today with football and rugby 7s. Few more events added tomorrow (shooting etc) and 1st medals on Saturday.
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If she can get a horse to sing Je Ne Regrette Rien, let alone worry about what key it’s in, that would be remarkable.
Ps. You may gather from that, the limit of my horsey knowledge!
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The treatment of horses at the games is political dynamite, since the German coach slapped a horse on the backside in Tokyo. This is the last games which will feature horses in Modern Pentathlon - in 2028 they’ll race over obstacles instead.
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Yes, I’ve read and heard about this, they are abandoned and I think in the worst cases even killed by some pretty gruesome methods.
Quite a few charities to rehome them.
Gambling related animal sports ** is a murky world.
** I’m not sure I’d call them sports 
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FTFY 
Blame Labour for that one 
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The French must be spending a fortune on security for this Olympics, I gather they’re even recruiting police and sniffer dogs from other countries like the Uk
There’s a big kudos factor in hosting them and clearly brings in tourists but I’m not sure how sustainable it is outside of the major cities in the world with deep pockets?
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Yeah, I’d be happy to see it banned but would drive it underground, at least the government can tax it in its current format.
Although I gather loopholes like online gambling hosted in on small islands avoided that but I think they were trying to get that changed!
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I’m sure I watched a documentary about how that was possible, the horse had some name like Mr Ed or something, was pretty good.
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Yeah, underground dressage, all the posh nobs meeting in an asdas car park at 2am to dance their horses, still worth it!
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Didn’t the German coach punch the horse?
Modern pentathlon has that comedy element where the horses are drawn at random, so the athlete has never ridden it before.
From memory, the horse in question was a nightmare and athletes who were in contention for a medal found themselves with a horse that was unrideable and they dropped right down the order.
It might have been entertaining for the spectators, but it wasn’t a good sporting outcome 
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I partly meant greyhound and horse racing, but that’s because I’ve never been a fan.
I still see the country folk meeting up for hunts when I’m out and about. In theory they aren’t hunting foxes, but…
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2 ex colleagues moved to Spain and work on Gibralter in online gaming companies. (Pre Brexit!)
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On R5L this morning there was a woman called Rebecca who spoke very clearly and confidently about the necessity of whipping horses to train them for dressage.
If you wanted someone to front the Cruelty to Animals League, she would be it…
The justification was that 99% of the time the horses are loved and cared for…
it’s been a long time since i did any milling, but if i was ever to get back in the ring, woman or not, this is the type of person i’d get back in the ring to fight…
This could (i hope) spell the end of dressage…
And the Olympic Gold Medal for whipping your horse in to shape goes to…
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