Paris Olympics: Introducing… Carl Hester

Friday 26 July 2024

Carl Hester began his Olympic career as the youngest ever British rider at Barcelona in 1992.

In Paris he will be the oldest at 57, making a bid in a record breaking seventh Olympics to add to the team gold, silver and bronze medals he won in the last three.

But Team GB is facing up to the suspension on the eve of the Games of one of their biggest stars, and Hester's protégé, Charlotte Dujardin, after a video emerged of her whipping a horse 24 times in a private training session.

Dujardin and Hester, alongside Laura Bechtolsheimer, famously claimed a team dressage gold at London 2012.

When he rides in Paris, Hester will become only the second British athlete to feature at seven Olympics, the other was Nick Skelton.

Before Dujardin's withdrawal, the team was favourite for a medal alongside Denmark and Germany.

Becky Moody riding Jagerbomb will now be the third team member.

Hester has spoken ahead of the Games about being willing to take more risks this time out on his horse Fame.

"The pressure is different now because we've been winning medals and the expectation is high all the time," he told Horse and Hound.

"We're an experienced team and with the horses we've got at the moment, we feel like if we didn't come home with a medal we'd have lost it."

He has not commented publicly since Dujardin's statement on Tuesday in which she said that what happened was completely out of character and did not reflect how she trained her horses or coach her pupils.

"However there is no excuse," she said. "I am deeply ashamed and should have set a better example in that moment. I am sincerely sorry for my actions and devastated that I have let everyone down, including Team GB, fans and sponsors."

The third team member for Paris is Charlotte Fry, riding Glamourdale.

Earlier this month it was announced that Hester's journey to London 2012 would feature in a biopic named Stride.

He moved to Sark with his mother Brenda when he was four.

"I remember going up to touch my first horse in those days; it took a mouthful of my hair and I cried and ran back to my mother," he told BBC Radio 4's Desert Island Discs in 2022.

"But I still loved horses right from the word go."

His family were not horsey, but the love grew in Sark.

"I just had this fascination with them. Any time I could ride or any time I could borrow one of my friends and I could get on their horse I would do it. I was just obsessed with learning to ride."

At 19 he moved to England to work with horses, eventually answering an advert for a job at the Fortune Centre in Hampshire. It was there he first competed and in 1985 won the Young Dressage Rider Championship.

His break came when Dr Bechtolsheimer approached him to join his yard as a rider, where he rode and trained for three and a half years, going to the World Championships in 1990, the Europeans in 1991 and Barcelona in 1992.

The Olympic dressage competition begins on 30 July, with the team final on 3 August. The individual final is the following day.