H&H’s dressage editor Oscar Williams considers the challenges going through elite dressage, why comparable points are being raised time after time, and what must occur to attain actual and lasting change
Footage of Charlotte Dujardin warming up in Amsterdam, circulated on-line in latest weeks, has produced a now-familiar sequence: a brief video goes viral, consultants remark, outrage builds, and the game finds itself, as soon as once more, performing concern.
A latest article in The Occasions adopted that sample. A World Horse Welfare spokesperson stated the video was “a tough watch”, with “clear indicators of stress and battle behaviour”.
That evaluation issues, in fact. However what issues extra – and what not often follows – is readability about what ought to really change.
Charlotte makes for handy headlines. However a number of riders had been filmed driving a horse ahead right into a limiting rein in the identical warm-up.
And that isn’t unusual. Variations of this may be seen throughout disciplines and ranges of competitors.
That’s to not excuse, however for instance, that to deal with this as a narrative about particular person conduct is relatively reductive – and avoids a lot tougher questions.
Charlotte wasn’t deemed to have damaged any guidelines. However when The Occasions put a collection of direct inquiries to the British Equestrian Federation – whether or not her driving met their requirements, whether or not it represented a very good instance of welfare, whether or not they could be joyful for pupils to be taught this fashion – none of these questions had been answered.
The reason supplied was that 4 minutes of footage from a 45-minute warm-up made an correct evaluation unattainable. That may be technically true. It doesn’t learn as confidence within the sport’s personal requirements although.
A part of the issue is that the foundations themselves create room for evasion. The FEI Basic Rules prohibit the usage of spurs “excessively” or “persistently” – however in follow, that is left to the interpretation of particular person stewards.
However the deeper downside is structural. Riders experience the best way judges reward. They’re responding rationally to what wins.
So, if we deem the driving seen in Amsterdam as genuinely opposite to the ideas of the game, then the query shouldn’t be solely why riders had been doing it, however why the incentives that produce it have been left unchanged.
Specializing in Charlotte permits the game to deal with this as an issue of particular person conduct relatively than an issue of incentives.
And if we do this, the story fades – because it at all times does. The subsequent video surfaces – because it at all times does. And nothing modifications.
Is dressage in danger?
The feedback part underneath The Occasions piece contained a well-known chorus: requires dressage to be banned.
It’s price addressing briefly – not as a result of I imagine the argument is robust, however as a result of it tends to set the emotional temperature of those debates earlier than the extra helpful dialog can start.
I don’t imagine a ban will occur. The edge for prohibition in equine sport has by no means been a welfare concern alone – if it had been, racing would already be underneath existential menace.
Horseracing generates £4.1 billion yearly and employs a whole bunch of 1000’s of individuals, but has not been banned regardless of a considerably greater horse fatality price. That tells you one thing about how these choices are literally made – on financial, cultural, and political grounds as a lot as welfare ones.
It extends past Britain too. Throughout Europe, the horse sector generates greater than €100 billion in annual financial affect and helps round 400,000 jobs.
The FEI prohibits the usage of spurs ”excessively” or “persistently” – however in follow, what this implies is left to the interpretation of particular person stewards. Credit score: Alamy
There’s additionally a deeper irony within the framing of elite dressage horses as unregulated victims. FEI horses are topic to rigorous passport necessities, necessary vaccination protocols, prohibited substance testing, and worldwide illness surveillance.
In comparison with the typical horse, they’re among the many most carefully monitored horses in existence.
A extra credible threat than abolition is elevated oversight. When a sport’s personal regulatory framework leaves seen gaps, it tends to ask others to fill them.
That is beginning to occur in elements of Europe. Danish MEP Niels Fuglsang has been a persistent voice pushing for harder EU-level oversight of horse welfare.
And but, for now, the political precedence is elsewhere. In President of the European Fee, Ursula von der Leyen’s, mission letters to each the Commissioner for Agriculture and Meals and the Commissioner for Well being and Animal Welfare, horses aren’t talked about as soon as; the Commissioner for Well being and Animal Welfare has been explicitly tasked with modernising EU animal welfare guidelines – however the mandate focuses on cattle, unique imports, and meals security.
The infrastructure for EU-level intervention exists; the political will to use it to equestrian sport doesn’t but. When the MEP Horse Group met with von der Leyen this month, the headline coverage dialogue centred on simplifying the Single Marketplace for equine mobility and commerce – welfare reform wasn’t the main focus.
The image, then, is of a sector massive sufficient to draw political consideration, however not but going through the sort of sustained legislative strain that might power the game’s hand. That window could not keep open indefinitely.
However welfare reform doesn’t exist in a vacuum. Each viral video can be a relevance downside – it makes dressage tougher to promote to new audiences, sponsors, and broadcasters at precisely the second the game must be attracting them.
The governance actuality
I’ve spoken to sufficient folks inside the FEI to know that real will to reform exists. However their construction for rule modifications inhibits these intentions.
Altering the foundations of worldwide equestrian sport is a sluggish and structured course of by design. Proposals have to be submitted by nationwide federations, reviewed by technical committees, circulated for suggestions, redrafted, and finally voted on on the FEI Basic Meeting – usually many months after the difficulty that prompted them has already light from public consideration.
Reform in worldwide equestrian sport should go via a voting system through which Germany has the identical weight because the Cayman Islands – consensus is the objective, velocity shouldn’t be. Credit: FEI/Shortcut by Jason
Even when a proposal passes, new guidelines usually solely come into power the next 12 months.
The voting construction compounds this. Every nationwide federation carries equal weight, which means that for dressage functions, Germany, which gained each Olympic crew gold medal between 1984 and 2008, has the identical vote as international locations with out a single FEI dressage rider.
Consensus throughout that breadth of membership is troublesome to construct rapidly, and radical change is tougher nonetheless.
Extra considerably, the core dressage rulebook is barely topic to full revision on a four-year cycle – the latest being this 12 months.
Outdoors that window, amendments are usually restricted to pressing welfare considerations, technical corrections, or unintended penalties in present guidelines – which suggests the game’s capability to reply to a fast-moving public debate is structurally constrained even when the need is there.
Additionally, the foundations that do emerge from pressing welfare considerations aren’t at all times as strong as they seem. A regulation launched in July 2025 prohibiting substances used to induce foaming round a horse’s mouth is a working example: the welfare intention is evident, however the enforceability shouldn’t be.
If an athlete challenged such a ruling on the Court docket of Arbitration for Sport, the burden of proof on the FEI could be appreciable. One imagines the steward’s report making for attention-grabbing studying – at what level does conscientious welfare oversight turn out to be a style check?
Good intentions written into obscure guidelines have a behavior of being examined – and failing.
This context issues for understanding why the identical debates recur with out decision. Riders, house owners, and directors who need change could discover themselves working inside a system that processes reform in years relatively than months.
What actual change may appear to be
Regardless of the structural difficulties, change shouldn’t be unattainable – and a few of it doesn’t require ready for the FEI’s four-year cycle.
Minimal requirements for turnout, licensing necessities for driving centres and instructors, and checks on unregulated breeding would set up a welfare baseline that presently doesn’t exist – the sort of oversight utilized to livestock, however largely absent for horses saved exterior agricultural contexts.
That won’t be cost-free, and poorly designed regulation might make an already inaccessible sport extra so. However horse sport’s accessibility downside predates any proposed regulation.
Executed effectively, a licensing framework might really stabilise the driving centres on which grassroots participation relies upon – and any severe regulatory agenda would should be paired with funding, grants, and pathways that deal with participation as a public good relatively than a non-public privilege.
None of that is imminent. However regulation has at all times been one of the efficient drivers of cultural shift – seatbelt legal guidelines modified not simply behaviour however attitudes to street security; smoking laws did the identical.
Minimal requirements for a way horses are saved, dealt with, and bred would, over time, reshape what folks contemplate regular and acceptable, lengthy earlier than anybody reaches a contest area.
Inside the sport itself, essentially the most significant modifications would goal incentives immediately.
Judging standards that explicitly reward seen leisure and softness – relatively than merely penalising apparent resistance – would start to shift what riders prepare for. In the long run, introducing coefficients that weight marks in opposition to observable battle behaviour throughout a check would make welfare a structural a part of how dressage is scored.
Riders experience the best way judges reward. Till the judging standards modifications, coaching gained’t both. Credit: Getty
Stronger steward authority in warm-up arenas, with agreed behavioural indicators triggering intervention relatively than particular person discretion, would shut the hole between the foundations as written and the foundations as utilized.
And a compulsory welfare schooling requirement for riders getting back from sanctions, as Richard Davison argued in his most up-to-date H&H column, would sign that rehabilitation is taken significantly relatively than managed as a reputational inconvenience.
These aren’t radical propositions. Different sports activities have made tougher modifications underneath much less strain.
The honesty downside
Dressage has at all times bought itself on a specific picture. The horse is keen. The aids are invisible. The partnership is harmonious. That picture is a part of what makes the game interesting – and a part of what makes these moments so damaging after they floor.
Writing in Grandprix in response to the Amsterdam footage, Timothée Peugnot and Lucas Tracol make an essential level in regards to the narratives the game constructs round itself.
After a disaster, the subsequent up-and-coming star is at all times positioned as a saviour, like Charlotte as soon as was – introduced as proof that the game’s values are intact.
The issue is that this locations unattainable expectations on people and units them as much as fail the second they fall quick. It additionally lets the game keep away from the tougher dialog about why the disaster occurred within the first place.
However elite sport is bodily demanding, mentally pressurised, and filled with aggressive incentive. Pretending in any other case doesn’t shield the game’s fame – it undermines it.
When the hole between the picture and the truth turns into seen, the harm is worse exactly as a result of the picture was so rigorously maintained.
As Anna Ross has written, the game is regularly unwilling to look critically at itself – and an excessive amount of of the content material produced round it retreats into secure, uncritical celebration relatively than sincere engagement.
What does good welfare really imply?
Each governing physique will inform you that horse welfare is their primary precedence. Nevertheless it’s price asking what that really means – as a result of good welfare and elite sport exist in a stress that no one within the business likes to acknowledge immediately.
A horse in good welfare is, by most definitions, an animal that’s calm, free from ache, in a position to categorical pure behaviour, and never topic to important stress.
A horse competing on the high degree is requested to carry out actions of appreciable bodily and psychological demand, in an surroundings of noise and strain, underneath a rider responding to aggressive incentive.
These two descriptions aren’t straightforwardly suitable.
That doesn’t imply elite equestrian sport is inherently abusive. Nevertheless it does imply that the query “what is sweet welfare?” can’t be answered with out first acknowledging that sport and welfare exist on a spectrum.
My very own view is that good welfare and horse sport aren’t inherently incompatible, even when they’re in stress. Horses might be requested to do issues they wouldn’t select to do, and should not significantly get pleasure from, with out that constituting poor welfare – supplied it causes no lasting hurt and their total high quality of life is sweet.
However that isn’t a situation we are able to assume is at all times met. The burden of demonstrating it sits solely with the people concerned, which is exactly why clearer requirements, relatively than particular person discretion, issues.
It’s additionally why the game wants to interact significantly with the rising physique of equine stress analysis, relatively than ready for the science to turn out to be plain.
What degree of bodily demand on a horse is tolerable? What does strain appear to be when it crosses a line?
Till the game is keen to interact with that actually – not defensively, not with reassuring language about concord and partnership, however with real precision about what it asks of horses and why – it’ll maintain having the identical argument.
For me, strain isn’t the identical as struggling. A horse that’s tense in a warm-up, above the bit, displaying battle behaviour, isn’t essentially being abused. The edge sits someplace round this: driving that produces sustained, unresolved battle behaviour – the place the horse’s indicators are persistently overridden relatively than addressed – has crossed a line.
The query stewards, judges, and federations have to ask then shouldn’t be “is that this horse tense?” however “is that this stress being listened to?” – and, critically, how can we assess that in follow.
That isn’t a rhetorical query. It requires agreed behavioural indicators, skilled officers, and the institutional will to behave on what they observe. The instruments exist. The framework doesn’t.
The folks inhibiting change will not be detached to horses – most of them have devoted their lives to those animals, which is exactly what makes this difficult.
However what the game owes them – and itself – is the honesty to maintain asking these questions as a matter of ongoing behavior, not in response to a video, not in a rigorously worded assertion.
Whether or not it’s able to that’s, genuinely, unclear.
We’d love to listen to your ideas. The place do you assume the road sits between acceptable coaching strain and poor welfare – and do you assume the game is presently on the best aspect of it? Write in and share your views at hhletters@futurenet.com, together with your identify, nearest city and county, for the possibility to have your response printed in a future concern of Horse & Hound.
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H&H dressage and sport horse editor, and sports activities supervisor
Oscar joined Horse & Hound in October 2023 and is the journal’s dressage editor and sports activities supervisor, overseeing protection of equestrian sport. After learning equine science at Myerscough Faculty, he spent 4 years working for main dressage rider Emile Faurie, competing on the 2015 Nationwide Dressage Championships and travelling with the yard to CDIs together with Aachen and Saumur. He holds a grasp’s diploma in Literature from York St John College (2021).