If you could hear me now, I’m whooping and hollering. The Olympic eventing show jumping rounds are playing as I write, how wonderful the sport has been to kick off the equestrian element of the Olympics.

The Irish equestrians and sport horses jumping for Ireland, and for other nations, have been so impressive. I need a lie down before the show jumping competition begins.

First off, a word on three-time Olympic dressage champion Charlotte Dujardin.

She withdrew from the Olympics last Monday and was provisionally suspended by the International Federation for Equestrian Sport (FEI) for six months, due to a video showing her repeatedly striking a horse being ridden by a student.

Dujardin has admitted the behaviour was “unacceptable." It was most definitely unacceptable.

As a professional equestrian, a wife and a mother, she needs support to rebuild. If she’s smart, she’ll rebuild the right way and help advance dressage in the right direction.

I rarely feel disheartened, I’m an optimistic sort, but seeing the sport horse sector’s general reaction following the release of the Dujardin video had me feeling really low.

What I witnessed in the first couple of days of the story breaking made me not just sad, but angry too.

So many equestrians, including some dressage officials, went on the defensive, openly focused on the timing of the video release, the ‘sabotage’ factor, before any mention of the wellbeing of the horse was voiced.

Collective guilt

You have to be living under a rock not to see that horse sport is facing very serious scrutiny from many directions at the moment, even before the Olympic disgrace of Dujardin.

I’ve asked myself if the responses were some sort of a collective guilt, the old “we all know what goes on” attitude?

Is there collective guilt over what have we turned a blind eye to over the years or not spoken up about due to social pressure? Or is it the gossip factor of social media – everyone pearl-clutching in the wrong direction?

Racing has been under microscopic scrutiny for years, and perhaps the sport horse sector can take a note of the shift towards transparency.

These days, equestrianism is a much more closed shop than racing.

With Dujardin and Monday’s headlines on the alleged drug test failure of Irish Army horses making headlines, now more than ever let’s work together towards highlighting all the good within our sport.

Let’s also call out the bad too though, loud and clear.

We are being watched more closely than ever before. Let’s make our sport horse-forward, open, honest and something to shout about, we have so much to be proud of.