Versailles, France—July 30

Carl Hester, the longtime mentor of disgraced British Olympian Charlotte Dujardin, made his first public comments on his friend and pupil being banned from competition after a video of her whipping a student’s horse came out.

Speaking after his ride on Fame at the Paris Olympic Games, Hester expressed both sympathy for Dujardin and firm condemnation of the practices shown in the video.

“I’m here; I haven’t seen her, and I know that things are very, very difficult,” he said “I know things are very difficult, but she’s surrounded by people that are trying to help her. She obviously accepts what she did—which she had to do—and I’m glad she’s done that for her. And everyone can see that this is four years ago, people do make mistakes, and what do we do? We never forgive people for all the things that happen in life. I mean, you know, right now it’s going to be a long road for her, and a lesson—for everybody really, in the horse world. We’ve got to put the horses first.”

Hester was among the 10 board members of the International Dressage Riders Club to sign a July 25 statement “universally condemn[ing]” Dujardin’s actions in the video. 

Speaking at the Games, Hester stood by that statement but also noted that he had never witnessed her train a horse with the methods shown in the clip over their many years of working together, and he emphasized the clip was not taken at his yard.

“That video is fairly obvious, and nobody’s going to support that. You can’t,” he said. “But my personal opinion of Charlotte, over 17 years, I have not seen that,” he said.