LOCKIE PHILLIPS, HORSE TRAINER
Why We Shouldn’t Cancel Charlotte
Charlotte Dujardin caught my attention during the 2012 Olympics in London because Valegro was the first competitive dressage horse I saw in recent memory, in recent records, compete and win without an abundance of overtly obvious calming signals and signs of stress.
Valegro did show stress, lots of it, but in an environment where to his left and right horses showed stress x 100,000, he showed stress x 100, making him appear relaxed by comparison. Though not relaxed according to what I prefer and try to practise.
Putting myself in the shoes of another, I saw an exception in Charlotte then.
I do not see an exception in her now.
In subsequent years, when Valegro retired and I saw her riding other horses, it became clear to me that Valegro might have been an exceptional animal and an anomaly.
Digging a little deeper, I tried to find quotes from Charlotte herself talking about her champion horse because I’d heard a rumour that she had described Valegro as ‘hard mouthed.’
I don’t know if that is true, but if a gold medallist is describing her champion horse as ‘hard mouthed,’ what does it say about the training process that horse went through when nobody was watching?
I guessed, wildly speculating to only myself, that Valegro might be a horse who tolerated more pressure than perhaps other horses would. Perhaps he was a horse who was predisposed to working under an enormous amount of compression, without feeling emotionally off-kilter about it.
Therefore, Valegro was able to demonstrate high-level competitive riding without an abundance of signs of stress (not no stress at all, just drastically less than is typically seen in those contexts) and win. Valegro actually looked – sort of – happy with Charlotte compared to the horses around them.
In subsequent years, watching her ride Pumpkin and others, I personally did not like what I saw. I felt, quietly, she needed to listen more to Carl Hester and less to the Continental Hyper-Mobile style that is now so rewarded across the board.
So, in recent years, my interest in Charlotte waned. And now today, Charlotte is undergoing the effects of Cancel Culture.
Horrific
Cancel Culture is something I would like to cancel. Let us not throw the baby out with the bath water.
Here is a competitor who demonstrated at the Olympics that once in a blue moon, one horse in a million could compete – and win – with a drastically minimised output of overt signs of stress. Charlotte showed that to us.
She also popularised and brought into fashion the era of helmets in competitive riding. Before that, it was all tuxedoes and top hats. Now, helmets are popular and normalised at upper levels. She, together with Carl, also used their enormous platform to advocate for the ample turn out of their horses. They hacked their top horses on country roads.
At a time when some competition horses never saw light of day, or had a chance to roll in a field, or play with their buddies, this person was returning from world championships and instead of posting a photo of her ribbons and trophies, would post a video of turning her champion horse out in a field with buddies.
And then we see a video of her abusing a horse with a whip.
In my opinion, the video is egregious. Her actions in the video are horrific. They appear well practiced. They appear to be perfunctory, like she had done them before. There is NO EXCUSE for what she did. It is abuse. But there are explanations why.
Understanding WHY is crucial for us right now if we are to avoid the pitfall before us. The pitfall of making camps on the left and right, while we hurl abuse at each other. Let us have enough self-restraint to pump the brakes on our outrage, and understand why.
We must understand why, if we are to use this moment as a crucial turning point in the development of horse welfare.
I have made mistakes with horses. So, have you. Yes, you.
I have done things with horses out of frustration. So, have you.
Nobody is immune to that. All of us have sinned.
But I have never whipped a horse like was shown in the surfaced video. I have never done that. To the laughter of those filming? Sickening. And the inaction of the rider. And the entitlement of Charlotte. And yet, I do not agree that now is the time to cancel Charlotte.
It would not occur to me to blame the victim, though the timing is perhaps up for speculation. But perhaps the timing has nothing to do with it. I know what it is like to wait years, 10 years in fact, to blow the whistle on my abusers. I have abusers who I am still waiting for the right time to blow my whistle on them. Now is not the time.
Mistakes
I waited for a time when the groundswell of support was such that I could blow the whistle and not stand alone. Perhaps Charlotte’s whistleblower waited until they had enough support around them, so they COULD be brave. I do not know. But we must not make this about the whistleblower. That is the lowest hanging fruit here today.
Let us make this about WHY the top competitor in our industry so completely failed. Why we cannot sanction almost any competitive riding in 2024 through an ethics lens. And why we need to stop cancelling people’s mistakes, and instead learn from them so that we never, ever repeat them.
Two things can be true at the same time: someone can be abusing horses and, in the same breath, make great choices for them. It is the human problem.
Just like cancel culture is the annihilation of others we abhor, in the same way abusive horse training is the annihilation of the horse’s well-being in real time. Be careful. Outraged or not we need to be careful to track the threads of aggression and hostility through our bodies, lest we make hypocrites of ourselves.
To use hostility and aggression and lack of listening to and compassion for others – to cancel one another – is the same human trait of lack of listening, hostility, aggression, and lack of compassion shown to the horse in Charlotte's scandal.
To weaponise the same weapons of the person we cancel is by definition incongruent.
The best way to no longer sanction the sort of abuse Charlotte engaged in, is to eliminate those same urgings from ourselves, wherever they show up. Yes, even when directed at Charlotte.
Performance
The human brain’s most common glitch, in my opinion, is the glitch of incongruence. Our brains have not fully reconnected recent complex brain developments into our body, our ancient wisdoms, our empathy and our kindness. I mean, we can. But it takes a Herculean effort to do so.
In order to live a congruent life, one must be actively anti-social to the mainstream because mainstream living requires incongruence to fit in, survive, and be successful.
Charlotte, like tens of thousands of top equine professionals, is part of this problem: stuck in a system where she must force performance, force compliance, by any egregious means necessary, so that she can maintain her safety, her success, her image, and her acceptance. Imagine being an Olympic Gold Medallist training someone’s ‘lesser’ horse, and the horse is not doing it the way your Valegro did it for you. Imagine doing that in front of an audience.
"I saw Charlotte at a clinic and she couldn't get the results. It must be Valegro, not her."
Such nasty comments are commonplace and directed every day at all trainers, everywhere. Trainers are under enormous pressures to prove not only competency, but competency RIGHT NOW, and the means necessary are not important. This is a dynamic I work hard every day to counter. It is so hard to do.
If we cancel Charlotte now, we risk the following:
not learning from this – WHY did the TOP COMPETITOR in the industry still fail at horse ethics 101 because if she is failing, we all are;
covering up the positive impact she made towards helmet culture, turn out culture and showcasing a relaxed horse 12 years ago on one of the world’s biggest stages. Even if Valegro was one in a million, she still showcased that;
losing an opportunity to understand the popular culture of training and how we need to double our efforts to reform it.
We actually need new parameters of competency. New parameters of success. We don't need to cancel Charlotte. She will get what is coming to her.
Damaged
Cancel Culture in my opinion is the epitome of a diversion tactic. It is also hostile and aggressive. An eye for an eye and we are all blind.
Someone grappling with their own conscience in what they did or are currently doing to horses, can redirect their internal turmoil onto another and heap their own self-loathing onto a scapegoat. They get an adrenal hit out of it. They feel better about themselves.
The Germans call this ‘Schadenfreude,’ the direct translation of this is ‘crappy friend,’ or happiness at the misfortune of others. It is a toxic trait in my opinion to cancel another.
We cannot talk a storyline of holding space for misbehaving horses, for troubled horses, if we cannot hold space for misbehaving and troubled people.
I see someone like Charlotte, whipping a horse the way she did, and I want to throw up. But I also acknowledge how troubled she must be. Troubled and damaged, before, during and after the abuse. Not an excuse. I hold no sympathy for her. But damn, how damaged must someone be, to do what she did.
And how damaged must someone be to believe they can cancel another, to deny their existence, like a death. The same way horses are denied their existence.
Be careful, outraged or not, to track aggression patterns through our bodies and stop them in their tracks.
I have been saying for months that the shit is going to hit the fan this Olympics. We need to be ready to catch the people who are abandoning ship.
The Olympics hasn't even started yet, and here we are: shit-fan-ship.
Lockie Phillips is a horse trainer, equestrian performance coach, international clinician, and hoof care provider. For more information on Lockie, his horses, and courses click here.
