World and Olympic dressage champion Valegro picked up an unexpected passenger during his trip back to England on Oct. 22 after performing with Charlotte Dujardin at the Oslo Horse Show and the Global Dressage Forum in Denmark. An immigrant stowed away beneath the gelding’s horse box in Calais, France, in an illegal attempt to cross the English Channel to Dover, England.

Despite increased border control procedures by the French government, the port city of Calais has seen thousands of refugees camped out in makeshift shelters waiting to catch a ride aboard trucks leaving France via the Channel Tunnel train. Truck drivers are fined about $2,500 if they are found crossing the English border carrying an immigrant in their vehicle.

However, Valegro’s box was stopped before entering the tunnel by police officers with a sniffer dog. They’d noticed the man hanging around on closed circuit video and grew suspicious when he disappeared. They found the stowaway clinging to the chassis of the truck. The immigrant had reportedly chosen the most accessible truck in line for the train.

“We were told to pull over once we’d gone through the barrier,” Valegro’s groom Alan Davies told the Daily Mail. “I thought they just wanted to check the gas was off as they do on the trains, but security came over and looked under the lorry. They then said, ‘There’s someone under there.’ ”

French authorities detained the stowaway, and Valegro returned home safely to Carl Hester’s yard in the Cotswolds.