Olympics row over horse 'cruelty'

An international row started when a video of a dressage horse was shown on youtube. It showed the Swedish rider Patrik Kittel warming up his horse using the Rollkur technique and made the tongue of the horse go blue. This technique makes the horse's neck round in a deep curve so its nose almost touches its chest. The horse can only see its own feet, so it is reliant on the rider for balance. This incident caused a storm of protest and threats to boycott the 2012 event in London. The British Horse Society demands the FEI to investigate this incident and the dressage training methods and practises being used on some of the world's most expensive competition horses.

Source:

The Observer
Sunday, 3 January 2010

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/jan/03/olympics-row-over-horse-cruelty

Reaction: I agree with the British Horse Society that there has to be an investigation about this matter! The horse riding sport should not harm the horses and if people abuse their horses in my opinion they should be banned from the sport or having horses at all. The fact that the tongue of the horse turns blue means something is wrong (most of the time it means they are in pain or have been during training) so I think an investigation about this particulary horse rider is also very important.