IOC Must Ban the Horses: A Formal Request From PETA Entities on Four Continents

For Immediate Release:
August 14, 2024

Contact:
David Perle 202-483-7382

The Olympic-size scandals involving vicious whipping, horses bleeding from the mouth and legs, necks forced into bizarre contortions, and bridles pulled so harshly that the horses’ tongues turned blue are over for now—and if PETA entities and others who care about horses have their way, they will never occur at the Games again.

Today, PETA organizations in the U.S., Asia, Australia, France, Germany, India, the Netherlands, Switzerland, and the U.K.—representing over 9 million members and supporters—formally requested that the International Olympic Committee (IOC) eliminate equestrian events from the Olympic Games, citing the sport’s ongoing abuse scandals and the impossibility of policing it as well as the public’s refusal to support entertainment that exploits animals and disgust at its occurrence.

The cruelty that hit the headlines during the last three weeks isn’t new, the letter points out. The abuse involved in forcing horses to perform is pervasive, and the yearslong failure of the sport’s ruling body to protect horses warrants its ejection from the Olympics.

“Colombian-American Olympic coach and former rider Cesar Parra was caught on video whipping one horse and tying down the head of another,” the letter reads. “Swiss Olympian Martin Fuchs whipped a clearly terrified horse who didn’t want to jump a fence. Canadian Eric Lamaze’s horse dropped dead during a stadium jumping event. German Olympian Ludger Beerbaum was caught ‘barring’ a horse. New Zealand Olympian Sir Mark Todd repeatedly beat a reluctant horse with a thick tree branch. A video reported to be of Danish Olympian Carina Cassøe Krüth whipping a horse while training under bronze medal winner Andreas Helgstrand in 2022 has just surfaced. The abuse is entrenched, and all efforts to eradicate it have failed.”

There is precedent for eliminating the events. The ruling body of the Modern Pentathlon, the Union Internationale de Pentathlon Moderne, swiftly ended the equestrian portion of the sport when it saw the public outrage in response to the whipping and striking of the terrified horse Saint Boy at the 2020 Olympic Games (held in 2021 in Tokyo).

Equestrian events are the only Olympic sports in which athletes must be forced, through violence and coercion, to participate.

“Subjugating animals to force them to perform dangerous and unnatural acts is contrary to the physical excellence and harmony among willing human competitors that characterize the rest of Olympic competition,” the letter concludes.

More than 153,000 people have e-mailed the IOC asking for the elimination of Olympic equestrian events.

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to use for entertainment or abuse in any other way”—points out that Every Animal Is Someone and offers free Empathy Kits for people who need a lesson in kindness. For more information, please visit PETA.org or follow the group on X, Facebook, or Instagram.