{"id":68584,"date":"2024-12-06T11:54:24","date_gmt":"2024-12-06T00:54:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.horsemagazine.com\/thm\/?p=68584"},"modified":"2024-12-06T15:07:33","modified_gmt":"2024-12-06T04:07:33","slug":"crime-and-punishment-the-fei-gets-it-wrong-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.horsemagazine.com\/thm\/2024\/12\/crime-and-punishment-the-fei-gets-it-wrong-again\/","title":{"rendered":"Crime and Punishment: The FEI gets it wrong, AGAIN"},"content":{"rendered":"

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So Charlotte Dujardin is disqualified for 12 months for what most riders would regard as a distasteful, but not outrageous offence – I would hazard a guess that a normal training session with the horse’s regular rider – or worse, her pal who took the video – would be more distressing for the animal. I doubt there is one of us who can honestly claim that they have never lost their temper with a horse and done something they later regretted. I can\u2019t. For mine, Charlotte\u2019s real crime was that her training technique was so wrong.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve seen some absolute artists with a long whip working from the ground, and they all stressed that you had to make sure the horse was not afraid of the whip, or you would lose the relaxation and beauty of the movement. Trouble is, once again, that the FEI judges are rewarding tense and \u2018spectacular\u2019 movements, so they are complicit in the crime. They are encouraging this sort of \u2018training\u2019.<\/p>\n

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Charlotte and Freestyle at Tryon<\/em><\/p>\n

It should have happened at the 2018 WEG in Tryon when Charlotte Dujardin rode Freestyle so aggressively that the work was horrible, nothing free or stylish here, and did the judges mark her down for it? No way, instead they gave her a Bronze Medal.<\/p>\n

At the time, I wrote: \u201cShe scored 8s for the big trots, but 6s for the piaffe and that was generous, and the passage looks a bit manufactured. Lovely big canter, but a mistake in the ones.\u00a0 For mine, Carl\u2019s test on Delicato was far nicer. Still the judges go wild, a score of 77.764%, it makes the Ground Jury look like a gaggle of star struck schoolgirls.\u201d<\/p>\n

After that WEG, Freestyle was so shattered that she needed a long long period of TLC with her breeder, before Cathrine Laudrup-Dufour could put the mare back together again, and show her to be the best in the world, I suspect that is really punishment enough for Charlotte.<\/p>\n

Back in\u00a0 the days when the FEI was run by horse people, not by bureaucrats who see their role as pandering to animal liberationists who really believe that the horse should never be asked to do anything it doesn\u2019t want to do, Ms Dujardin might have been given a quiet talking to, and be advised to pick the people she associates with more carefully.<\/p>\n

The real problem is that we lack judges who can recognize negative tension or if they can, have the guts to punish it. It was great to see the Germans fast track half a dozen real <\/strong>Grand Prix dressage riders into their judging program, if something is not done soon, then the liberationists will have their way and equestrian sport, and with it horses, will disappear\u2026<\/p>\n

Christopher Hector<\/p>\n

PS Back in 2016 I had the privilege of watching Charlotte Dujardin train two horses \u2013 Valegro and Barolo – for about two hours a day for five days in a row, at the Sunshine Tour show in Jerez.\u00a0 The training was exemplary, tactful, logical, wonderful to watch.<\/p>\n

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 <\/p>\n

with Barolo<\/em><\/p>\n

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and Valegro…<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Charlotte Dujardin has been disqualified, but does the punishment fit the crime, or has the FEI got it wrong again?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":68597,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"nf_dc_page":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[81,4,407],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-68584","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-breaking-news","category-dressage","category-home"],"acf":[],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.horsemagazine.com\/thm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68584","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.horsemagazine.com\/thm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.horsemagazine.com\/thm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.horsemagazine.com\/thm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.horsemagazine.com\/thm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=68584"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.horsemagazine.com\/thm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68584\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":68596,"href":"https:\/\/www.horsemagazine.com\/thm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68584\/revisions\/68596"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.horsemagazine.com\/thm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/68597"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.horsemagazine.com\/thm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=68584"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.horsemagazine.com\/thm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=68584"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.horsemagazine.com\/thm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=68584"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}