Team, Open

Germany had spent decades dominating the discipline of dressage but, in 2022 and 2023, they had lost their grip on the most important non-Olympic championships. Firstly Denmark, on home soil in Herning, had become World Champions, and then, in 2023, Great Britain had won the European title in Germany. By the time of the Olympics, however, both of Germany’s rivals were severely weakened by revelations concerning the abuse of horses during training. Two members of the Danish gold medal winning team were banned from competition and, at the end of July, the newspaper Idraettsmonitor published pictures of their Olympic horses in competition with blue tongues, which allegedly came from restricted blood supply via pressure applied to the bit. Finally, just a few days before the Games, three-time Olympic champion Charlotte Dujardin withdrew from Paris when film was released from 2022 showing her flicking a whip against her horse’s legs in a training session in order to get him to raise his knee lift.

With the best of Germany’s opponents weakened by the scandals, Germany should have won comprehensively but the nation did not produce the sparkling displays of the past, and the Danes were only denied a first Olympic gold by a fraction of a percentage. Great Britain were comfortably in the bronze medal position. On the German team, Isabell Werth’s gold medal was her eighth at the Olympic Games, which further extended her record for the most Olympic equestrian titles.

In a non-medal disqualification, the Belgian team, which originally placed fifth, was disqualified after a positive doping test by team member Domien Michiels. Michiels tested positive for dorzolamide, a diuretic considered a masking agent. Michiels was contaminated with the drug after he had used it to treat an eye infection in his dog.