As a new mother, Charlotte Dujardin wanted nothing more than for her daughter to witness her making history. Only this week, she insisted that her glittering equestrian career would continue to flourish despite motherhood.
‘People say it’s the end of your career to have kids, but we are showing it isn’t,’ she told the Mail as she posed for a photo with her 16-month-old daughter Isabella, adding that it would be ‘very special riding in front of her in Paris’.
According to the target she had set herself and savoured for months, Dujardin was to enter the history books as Britain’s most successful female Olympian.
Yet her dreams have been shattered in the space of a tumultuous 24 hours that not only scuppered her bid for glory at Paris 2024 but casts a long shadow over her years of triumph.
At 9pm on Monday, just days before she was due to trot out to applause in the stunning setting of the Palace of Versailles, a devastating 59-second video of her repeatedly whipping a horse ‘like an elephant in the circus’ was handed to her sport’s governing body. By 5 pm on Tuesday, it had sunk her hopes of Paris giving her a seventh Olympic medal — more than any female British athlete has ever achieved — not to mention a nailed-on damehood in the New Year’s Honour’s list.
Charlotte Dujardin, the three-time Olympic dressage champion, pictured with her horse Gio
The rollkur technique involves drawing a horse’s neck round in a deep curve so its nose almost touches its chest. It was banned by governing body the FEI in 2010 (file photograph)
Dujardin, riding Gio, reacts after competing in the dressage grand prix freestyle individual finals during the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games
And as the shockwaves reverberated around Team GB yesterday, Dujardin suffered the ignominy of being dumped by the sponsors she endorsed and charities she championed.
It amounts to a crushing fall from grace for a sportswomen feted as one of Britain’s greatest Olympians, known as much for her relentlessly hard work as her natural talents.
Born in Enfield, north London, in 1985, Ms Dujardin was barely out of nappies when she first sat in a saddle, and won her first ‘medal’, a silver, aged three at a Pony Club showjumping competition. It was the beginning of what was destined to be a long and successful equestrian career.
Her parents bought Shetland ponies for her and her sister Emma Jane and they spent their early childhood racing each other across ‘any field we could find, falling off a lot and getting back on’.
Ms Dujardin’s mother Jane once joked she ‘could make a donkey do anything’, and said: ‘Charlotte was the most determined child, who as a toddler would cry if she was removed from the back of a pony. She would ride every day after school and I’d even have to shine the car headlights on so she could keep riding in the dark.’
Dujardin attended a comprehensive school in Leighton Buzzard, Bedfordshire, but was dyslexic and often skipped lessons to go riding instead.
Her father Ian, who had a packaging company, and mother both worked hard to support her passion for horses, but they never had the sort of wealth to fund a career in top-level dressage, a discipline Dujardin had long been encouraged to take up by her instructor, which can cost hundreds of thousands of pounds.
In 2004, when Charlotte was 19, her mother received an inheritance when her own mother died from cancer, and used the money to buy Dujardin her first dressage horse. By now an accomplished horsewoman, Dujardin won ‘showing classes’ at the Horse Of The Year Show four times and was a winner in dressage at the All England Jumping Course at Hickstead on three occasions.
The 39-year-old could have become Britain’s most decorated female Olympian in Paris
Charlotte Dujardin of Britain on her horse Gio at the Tokyo 2020 Olympics
Six-time Olympic medallist Dujardin (pictured in 2021)
In 2007, she was talent-spotted by established dressage rider and horse trainer Carl Hester, who saw something special in the 22-year-old. She worked for him initially as a groom at his stables in Gloucestershire, but almost immediately began riding his horses. It was the start of a magnificent partnership.
In 2011, Dujardin was asked by Hester to help develop a Dutch Warmblood gelding, Valegro, for him to ride. However, she and Valegro struck up a seemingly telepathic relationship — she once said, ‘I think something and he does it and I laugh and think: “How does he know?”’ — and quickly began winning competitions together.
The goal of dressage is for the horse and rider to perform routines to music in perfect harmony, and Ms Dujardin and her beloved Valegro — whom she nicknamed Blueberry — were always as one.
Equestrian events are the only Olympic disciplines in which men and women compete against each other and it was at the London 2012 Olympics where Dujardin and her wonder horse trotted elegantly into the public consciousness, wowing the crowds as they strutted their stuff with their Land of Hope and Glory-themed choreography.
She endeared herself to the nation and emerged as a poster girl for equestrian sports by winning two gold medals in mesmerising style, including Britain’s first individual gold in the discipline.
The Queen, herself an avid horsewoman, invited her to Buckingham Palace for afternoon tea.
Dujardin with her fiancée Dean Wyatt-Golding after winning the gold medal at Rio 2016
Dujardin with her fiancée Dean Wyatt-Golding after winning the gold medal at Rio 2016
Dujardin later recalled: ‘The Queen said in front of me to a fellow guest: “There’s no other girl who can ride like Charlotte.” I nearly died of shock!’ While riding high in her sport, Ms Dujardin’s personal life turned sour three months after the London Games when she split up with her boyfriend Dean Golding.
The tall, dark, strapping South African, whose father owned a pub in a nearby Cotswolds village, had been introduced to her in 2007 by Hester. Like Dujardin, he was sporty and a gifted swimmer, and the couple lived a blissful rural life in a small cottage in the Cotswolds, getting engaged just a year after they met.
After the split, she said: ‘I’d had the most amazing time of my life at the Olympics, then it was as if it was crashing down. It was heartbreaking. Dean was the one. I thought I’d spend the rest of my life with him. Heartbreak is probably one of the hardest things to deal with.’
But the couple had rekindled their relationship by the time of the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro and Ms Dujardin won hearts as well as a third gold medal — plus a silver — while a grinning Mr Golding was spotted in the crowd holding a sign saying: ‘Can we get married now?’
Dulardin rides Valero in the Dressage – Grand Prix Freestyle for gold, Rio de Janeiro in 2026
Dujardin celebrates winning bronze in the Grand Prix Freestyle for her sixth medal
‘He’s a wally,’ Dujardin said afterwards. ‘He’s already proposed. I have already got a ring on my finger. I did promise him after London that we would get married, it just never happened with competitions and everything. But I will make sure it happens now.’
Meanwhile Valegro — then the best dressage horse in the world and now worth £6 million — was rewarded for his latest gold medal with sugar lumps and apples.
But the Rio Olympics were to be the last for the 14-year-old chestnut gelding, who was retired at the top of his game.
The synergy of their relationship — she even once told her boyfriend she would never love him as much — charmed the public and inspired the title of her book published two years after Rio: The Girl On The Dancing Horse.
But fresh heartache was just around the corner. In 2020, Golding walked out, leaving Dujardin devastated.
It was a year to the day before she put in another medal-winning performance at the 2021 Tokyo Olympics. In the wake of that success, she recalled the end of her relationship in an interview with the Mail: ‘I was so distraught. It was one of the worst days I’d ever had emotionally, physically. I didn’t know what to do with my life. Yet that morning in Tokyo [a year later], I just thought “Look at me now, I’m right up here at an Olympics. I’ve just won a team bronze. How much happier can you be?”’
In fact, she won two bronze medals — for individual and team dressage — on her new chestnut gelding, Gio, whom she nicknamed Pumpkin. The pair performed almost faultlessly in a silent stadium devoid of spectators because of Covid at the ‘Lockdown Olympics’.
What the world did not know at the time was that Ms Dujardin’s mother was seriously ill in hospital — so poorly in fact that the family had kept it from her.
Jane Dujardin had developed sepsis following a hernia operation and ended up having emergency surgery while her daughter made sporting history.
Carl Hester and Dujardin raise the Union flag in celebration of their medal wins in Tokyo 2020
Dujardin with Gio during the dressage horse inspection at the Tokyo games on July 23, 2021
Dujardin recalled how she spoke to her sister Emma Jane after winning and there were tears and laughter as she told her their mother had refused to have the operation until after the dressage team final. As soon as Dujardin returned from Tokyo, she went to Oxford’s John Radcliffe Hospital where Jane was being treated.
‘Just to see her, to see how proud she was of me was so emotional,’ she said. ‘She just kept saying how incredibly proud she was. Then my dad had bought all the newspapers. He’s like, “Charlotte, I can’t believe it, you’re on every front page!” I sat there with a box of tissues.’
Along with all the medals came riches beyond the imagination of the little girl from Enfield. Dujardin part-owned the horses that shared her triumphs and, when they were sold, they went for millions.
Her sporting success combined with a megawatt smile and a compelling back-story made her a sponsor’s dream.
Her portfolio of lucrative endorsements included a deal with Charles Owen riding hats, which can sell for up to £800 apiece — until yesterday, that is, when the high-end firm terminated their agreement with immediate effect citing any mistreatment of horses as ‘totally unacceptable’.
She has also been comfortable enough to turn down requests to appear on celebrity shows such as Dancing On Ice and A Question Of Sport, though she insisted the real reason was ‘I couldn’t risk myself ice skating — and I have limited general knowledge on most sports including dressage!’
It was at Tokyo that Dujardin briefly took the crown as Britain’s most decorated female athlete ever — having racked up three golds, one silver and two bronze Olympic medals.
And despite the heartache of her break-up with Mr Golding, she yearned for a time when she would have children, saying: ‘One day I can say to them, “Mummy was the most decorated.” ’ By the end of the Tokyo Games, she had lost that crown to cyclist Laura Kenny, who matched her on six medals — but five of Kenny’s were gold. Kenny was subsequently made a Dame.
Dujardin has been told she will never earn top honours after footage of her whipping a horse ‘like an elephant in a circus’ was revealed – and it could lead to her being stripped of her CBE
It only spurred on Dujardin, who vowed to triumph again at Paris 2024 and ‘keep going for years in dressage’, declaring: ‘Hopefully, I’ll get my most-decorated title back.’
In the meantime, she got her boyfriend back — again. In August 2022, Dujardin announced she was expecting a baby with Mr Golding, and once again the couple were engaged.
Isabella was born in March 2023, and fiercely ambitious Dujardin was back in the saddle within six weeks of giving birth, and competing after nine weeks. On the eve of Paris 2024, she said becoming a parent had changed her as a person. ‘With our sport there’s always another day, another competition to go to,’ she told the BBC last week. ‘But when you’ve got a child, it kind of just changes your perspective on real life.’ She planned for little Isabella to be in the stands in Paris. ‘For me it’s showing her that actually most important for me is to enjoy it. I don’t want it to be a stressful event. It is about making her proud. I want for her, one day, to look back and go: “That’s my mummy and how cool was that, that she was there competing at the Olympics. And, I was there to watch.” ’
She told another interviewer: ‘It isn’t about me any more, it’s about us doing this together as a family, and I want to make Isabella proud. Dressage isn’t life or death. Now I have Isabella, I’m realising — this is real life. And it’s really opened my eyes.
‘I feel so different, and I’m not going to worry or stress myself as much any more. I feel so blessed because I have had the best of both worlds. I’ve competed up to the best of the best, and achieved the most fantastic things, but now I have the most amazing little person in my life, and I have Dean too. It’s a dream come true.’
Sadly, it is a dream from which Dujardin has been rudely awoken. Today and on Monday, the Team GB horses will make their way to France through the Channel Tunnel. Each horse accompanied by a groom inside a special equine transport vehicle which goes in with the lorries on Le Shuttle.
But Dujardin, 39, the phenomenal horsewoman who put her sport on the map, will not be making the journey herself.
