There is a 17 year old girl that rides mostly dressage at the barn I board at. She is the absolute sweetest, most polite, soft spoken kid, and a gorgeous natural rider to boot. Iām seeing people say that rider should have just stopped the lesson, and all I can picture is the girl I know in that situation. She 100% would not have stopped either, she would have assumed that the olympic gold medalist dressage rider who is basically a celebrity and has a great reputation knows best. She would not have the experience to even really recognize when the āencouragementā with a whip crosses the line to abuse, or how she would go about even attempting to stop it if she was uncomfortable. Saying that rider is at fault for not just ending the session really bothers me, and frankly is just wrong. And I say that as a woman, in aerospace engineering, who will happily speak up against the guys when I think they are wrong.
Also, itās impossible to know what the whip usage really was without seeing the video. 24 times in a minute sounds awful at first, but thatās really less than every two seconds. Which, a rhythmic tap every other second in time with the gait to get more engagement is not a bad thing. A rhythmic hard whack, maybe not so much. Non-rhythmic random bursts of hard whipping, definitely not good. The whip itself makes a difference too. I experimented once to see what intensity of whacking myself with the dressage whip hurt, it was way harder than I personally would ever use on a horse before it started stinging much.
Basicallyā¦based on Charlotteās statement and everything else, Iām going to assume it was pretty bad, but Iām not personally going to say CDJ is a cruel trainer for sure unless the evidence showing that comes out. She is still an excellent rider regardless, but her training/coaching/horsemanship is pending judgement for now.
