Dressage is under an intense, critical spotlight at the moment, Fédération Equestre Internationale Dressage Director Ronan Murphy acknowledged on the first day of the annual FEI Sports Forum in Lausanne, Switzerland. Members of the new FEI Dressage Strategic Action Plan working group, who presented their work publicly for the first time Monday, said they are considering a number of reforms but are not making any formal recommendations yet. They emphasized they want to ensure any potential changes are knowledge-based rather than reactionary to ongoing controversies. 

“There’s a general sentiment that the sport is not in a trustworthy place at the moment, and we have lost confidence for the sport,” he said. “Some of the key areas that we’re criticized around are the training methods, the judging and scoring of the sport, and then specific high-profile incidents, often including some of our top athletes,” he said before referencing five anti-equestrian petitions that the International Olympic Committee received in advance of the Paris Olympic Games. Three of them—initiated through PETA, Change.org, and Care2petitions—had tens of thousands of signatures.”

The group is considering many reforms, Murphy said, including standardizing noseband for double and snaffle bridles in the Grand Prix, reviewing the minimum age requirement for horses competing in the Grand Prix, and making snaffle bridles optional up to and including the CDI3* level.  

Before diving into specifics, George Williams, former U.S. Dressage Federation president and chairman of the working group convened in January, discussed the foundational ideas underpinning the working group’s existence. 

“The first thing that is a question that we need to look at is, what is the real purpose of the dressage test, and is it a test of the riding? Is it a test of the training, or is it a test of the quality of the horse or the quality of the breeding?” he said. “I think, in reality, it is a combination of those three things. I do think we sometimes have a tendency to go in different directions. Are we going too spectacular? Are we asking too much of the horses, or are we not asking enough, from the rider point of view or the trainer point of view?” 

Any changes to the FEI’s rules and regulations need to be based on knowledge, according to Dr. Lise Berg, DVM, PhD, the only FEI veterinarian in the dressage working group. She cautioned against the belief that currently available studies offer definitive answers to complex questions regarding horse welfare, like at what point nosebands become too restrictive. 

“It’s super important that our decisions are knowledge-based,” she said. “I find that the word ‘evidence’ has become weaponized a bit. If we don’t have the evidence, we still have a lot of knowledge out there, we can still make good decisions. [Some people say] ‘If you look on Google Scholar, look at the amount of hits we get.’ The problem is the quality of those studies. The studies do not necessarily answer the questions that we really want answered.” 

Following testing and consultation with experts, the FEI standardized noseband tightness across disciplines by developing a device to measure it.

In a later session about the implementation of the FEI Equine Welfare Strategy Action Plan, FEI Veterinary Director Dr. Göran Åkerström, DVM, shared a similar view about the ongoing need for further research to improve horse welfare. Though not dressage-specific, the discussion hit on welfare issues that have emerged from the discipline in recent months. 

“Research is absolutely vital for the progress in the welfare field,” he said. “Sometimes there will be a lot of it, sometimes it will have varied quality. We invest a huge amount in research right now, probably more than we ever have done. We have many ongoing and there are more to come.” 

Promising cutting-edge research is already on the horizon. Åkerström mentioned a study that suggests sniffer dogs might be able to address an unmet need in detecting prohibited substances in horses’ saliva. FEI vets have seen the emergence of microdosed, short-acting heartrate-lowering drugs that go undetected in the current testing protocol for FEI endurance competitions. 

“The concentrations that the dogs can test is just incredible,” he said. “We’re talking picograms [one trillionth of a gram]. The dog is more sensitive than the lab.” 

Experts need to identify and support fields in which more research is needed, Berg said. While the scientific community may not have all the answers, the FEI needs to lean into discussions about horse welfare reforms, even in the absence of scientific data. 

“I think it is super important that we don’t shy away from the discussion,” she added, “because it seems a little bit like we were just trying to hide away, and we were just hoping that the storm would blow over. And clearly it is not. So, we really need to face this head on, not as a conflict, but as a conversation.” 

In that spirit, Murphy asked the dressage panel for their opinion on the compulsory use of double bridles in Grand Prix competition before the audience had the opportunity to ask questions. 

“I don’t know whether to thank you or not for that question,” said Williams, who got some laughs from the audience. “At this point, we are not making any recommendations, as a group. We each have our own opinions on it, but I do think it’s very important to stress that horses have to be properly trained and developed to carry the full bridle correctly and to really be able to use it properly. And at the same time, we also feel, I strongly feel, that the full bridle, really, in a way, is testing or checking the riders’ expertise.”

Still, Williams expressed reservations about the use of the double bridle in some contexts. Particularly for younger horses and riders, he suggested that the double bridle might not always be appropriate. 

“Is it really appropriate for a junior to be able to compete in a double bridle?” asked Williams, who serves as the U.S. Equestrian Federation youth dressage coach. “Do they have the expertise? From my own experience in looking at horses for sale and sales horses for clients, I’m really quite upset when I see 5- and 6-year-olds being shown to us in full bridles when we come to look at horses. For me, that’s totally inappropriate. So I think we have a lot more discussion to do on the point.”

During the welfare discussion, Andrew McLean, PhD, reiterated the importance of championing the comfort of horses in tack and equipment choices.

“We should look after [the horses], avoiding discomfort and pain, which can arise from the way that we use equipment, tight nosebands, bits, curb bits, spurs,” he said. “The more recent evidence that we have, there are about five papers now that suggest strongly that there are breathing restrictions when the pharynx of the horse is closed and that can come particularly from short necks and closed gullets. That’s also part of what’s being discussed in hyperflexion discussions.”

From the competition perspective, some worry that making snaffle bridles optional at the top level of FEI sport could introduce new problems. 

“We don’t want to promote the snaffle to be used just for the purpose of getting higher marks,” said German team coach Monica Theodorescu, deputy chair of the FEI Dressage Committee. “Maybe some judges would use it like ‘Oh, there is one in the snaffle, so he’s a good guy,’ and give him higher marks. And then later we might get other problems. Maybe horses are ridden stronger at home, this might lead to other problems that we don’t want to see, maybe inside the mouth or wherever.” 

Promoting ethical training methods is a goal for all equestrian disciplines, not just dressage. Still, the concepts introduced in the FEI Equine Welfare Strategy Action Plan discussion frequently sounded as if they were taken out of the USDF Training Manual. The final proposed FEI “First Principles” of ethical training methods for all sport horses presented by McLean was “regard for self-carriage.” In his description, he advocated for the application of a classical dressage exercise—a momentary release of both reins, also called überstreichen in German—to other disciplines. 

“If you train a bird to sit on your arm, you’ve really got to let go of its wings to prove it to me,” he said. “I’m not really convinced if you still have ahold of its wings. It’s a little bit the same with self-carriage. We should be showing in our sports, particularly in dressage, in each gait, and in most movements that we can release the reins for just a couple of steps and take them back. It would help the horse and enable it to be more fluid.”

Effective policy implementation, whether considered or realized, requires effective communication with the public. Though no one on the panel considered themselves an expert in online engagement with the detractors of dressage sport, panelist Kyra Kyrklund has had an unusually high number of discussions with online dressage critics. 

”Because I can’t shut my mouth,” she said dryly. “Many people don’t want to go online because they feel that they are getting attacked. But I have actually tried to have proper discussions with them online. I have been blocked from some pages, even if I try to be very polite, which is sometimes difficult, but I’m quite good at it. I try, because I don’t think that we can just sit still and watch those groups—they’re almost like religious sects. I don’t think that we are going to change the mind of the chief priests there, but maybe we can talk to some people who belong to those group and let them maybe get them to think in a different way, or see that there are other opinions too.” 

Though the accusations of horse abuse in the dressage industry loomed over the day’s proceedings, members of the Dressage Strategic Action Plan working group believe that the hot-button allegations that have recently come to the fore in dressage, such as the Charlotte Dujardin training videos or blue tongues reported at top-level European competitions, are not systemic issues in the sport.

“Personally, I’m absolutely convinced that it’s not a systemic problem. But we are very aware that there are issues in the sport,” Murphy said. 

“I 100% don’t believe that it is a systemic problem,” Kyrklund agreed. “You always have some murderers going around, but you can’t say that everybody is a murderer because of that. I think it is a few people, and nowadays they get caught, and that’s good.” 

For more information about specific sessions held during the annual meeting, visit the FEI Sports Forum website.