It would be totally disingenuous, however, to claim the clues were there, that a visit to the yard she shares with her long time coach and mentor Carl Hester was to be confronted by evidence of institutionalised maltreatment. Rather, the place was alive with honking and squawking, barking and neighing. Everywhere you looked there were animals: a couple of peacocks wandering through the trees, a gaggle of guinea fowl trotting up the drive, dogs everywhere, all allowed to wander free. Plus horses. Lots of them.
And when Dujardin talked about her horses, she talked of partnership, of mutual understanding, of respect. She rides as many as a dozen a day, and explained as she did so she analysed their character, assessing whether they are up to the job of joining her in competition, talking to each of them constantly. Her conversations, she insisted, are not one way. Rather she reckoned she has developed a process of communication that means there is information coming back all the time.
“I love Pete, he’s very enthusiastic,” she explained of Imhotep, the horse she hoped to ride at the Paris Olympics, who, is not the horse in the video but like all her mounts over the years, she invariably refers to by his nickname. “He’s only 11, quite young, but he seems to take everything in his stride. He is just such a happy horse, loves what he does, not a horse that goes shy or nervous. When we go into the ring, I say, let’s go Pete and he does. He absolutely loves to perform.”
In the several conversations we have had across her time at the top of her sport, this has always been the Dujardin claim: she and her horses are in it together. They love the competition almost as much as she does. Almost.
Because Dujardin is one of the most competitive individuals you could meet. You don’t have the urge to ride for up to six hours a day, six days a week without a thirst for success. When asked if there was any trickery involved in her choreography, she simply smiled: “hard work, nothing more.”
Hester, who first discovered her talents when Dujardin worked as a stable girl at his yard, confirmed her extraordinary drive. When asked who called the shots these days in their training relationship, he rolled his eyes in mock disdain.
“Obviously she does,” he said. “She is the most competitive person I have ever met. When she is waiting to go out into the arena, she’s like: right, bring on the world, I’m going to crush them.”
