Charlotte Dujardin

**Charlotte Susan Jane Dujardin**  (born 13 July 1985) is a British dressage rider and equestrian. She has been a World and Olympic winner many times. She is a powerful dressage rider of her era, She was the first to have a complete set of dressage titles at the same time. She has won six Olympic medals. She also has three gold medals. She is tied with cyclist Laura Kenny as Britain's female Olympian with many medals. However, Dujardin went out of the 2024 Summer Olympics after being not able to because of animal cruelty.

## Early life

Charlotte Dujardin was born in Enfield. She grew up in Leighton Buzzard, Bedfordshire. She started riding horses as a two-year-old. When she was three, she won second place at her first Pony Club show jumping competition. Later, her mother bought and sold ponies for her daughters.

As a child, Dujardin was diagnosed with dyslexia.
She went to Vandyke Upper School in Leighton Buzzard. She later said, "I didn't really go to school that much". She left school at 16.

Dujardin won the _Horse of the Year Show_ competition four times. was a winner at _All England Jumping Course at Hickstead_ three times.

## Career

Dujardin did dressage with a horse that she bought. She used an inheritance from her grandmother to do this.

In December 2012, Dujardin was riding a horse name Valegro. They won the _2012 World Cup freestyle event_ held at Olympia. They got a score of 87.875%. On 19 April 2015, in Las Vegas, Dujardin and Valegro won the FEI World Cup. They got a score of 94.169% on the last day of the competition.  This was their fourth World Title. They are the only pair to have ever held four world titles.

In 2019, Dujardin was taken out of the Longines FEI European Championships after blood was found on her horse, Mount St John.

### Olympics

Dujardin and Valegro were picked to represent Great Britain at the 2012 Summer Olympics. On 7 August 2012, Charlotte and Valegro were a part of the British team. The team won the gold medal in the team dressage event.

Dujardin and Valegro also won double gold medals for themselves at the 2016 Rio Olympics, making her the first British woman to retain an Olympic title for herself.

On 14 December 2016, Dujardin retired Valegro at age 14 after finishing a freestyle test.

## International Championship results

|colspan="12" align="center"|**Results**|||||||||
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
|2011|European Championships|Valegro|78.830%||Team|||||
|76.548%|6th|Individual Special||||||||
|79.357%|9th|Individual Freestyle||||||||
|2012|Olympic Games|Valegro|83.663%||Team|||||
|90.089%||Individual||||||||
|2013|European Championships|rowspan="3"|Valegro|85.942%||Team||||
|85.699%||Individual Special||||||||
|91.250%||Individual Freestyle||||||||
|2014|World Cup Final|Valegro|92.179%|||||||
|rowspan="3"|2014|rowspan="3"|World Equestrian Games|rowspan="3"|Valegro|85.271%||Team||
|86.120%||Individual Special||||||||
|92.161%||Individual Freestyle||||||||
|2015|World Cup Final|Valegro|94.196%|||||||
|rowspan="3"|2015|rowspan="3"|European Championships|rowspan="3"|Valegro|83.029%||Team||
|87.577%||Individual Special||||||||
|89.054%||Individual Freestyle||||||||
|rowspan="2"|2016|rowspan="2"|Olympic Games|rowspan="2"|Valegro|85.071%||Team||
|93.857%||Individual||||||||
|rowspan="2"|2018|rowspan="2"|World Equestrian Games|rowspan="2"|Mount St. John Freestyle|77.764%||Team||
|81.489%||Individual Special||||||||
|rowspan="2"|2019|rowspan="2"|European Championships|rowspan="2"|Mount St. John Freestyle|rowspan="2"|EL|4th|Team|
|66th|Individual|||||||||
|rowspan="2"|2021|rowspan="2"|Olympic Games|rowspan="2"|Gio|79.544%||Team||
|88.543%||Individual||||||||
|rowspan="2"|2021|rowspan="2"|European Championships|rowspan="2"|Gio|79.829%||Team||
|87.246%||Individual||||||||

### Animal cruelty

On 23 July 2024, Dujardin pulled out of competing at the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris after a video emerged of her whipping a horse during training over and over. She whipped the horse around 24 times in one minute. She was shortly taken out from competition.

Dujardin said that she was "deeply ashamed" and the problem "was completely out of character and does not reflect how I train my horses or teach my students".

## Writing and television

Dujardin let out her autobiography, _The Girl on the Dancing Horse: Charlotte Dujardin and Valegro_, in  (2018). She was on the Netflix show _Free Rein_.

## Personal life

Her then-fiancé Dean Golding wore a shirt that said, "Can we get married now?" after she won the gold medal at the _Rio Olympics_. On 6 March 2023, Dujardin gave birth to a daughter.

## Related pages

- Natasha Baker – para-dressage rider and equestrian
- Hiroshi Hoketsu – dressage rider and equestrian
- Nicole Uphoff – dressage rider and equestrian

## Infobox (sportsperson)

- **name**: Charlotte Dujardin
- **honorific suffix**: Commander of the Order of the British Empire, CBE
- **image**: Charlotte Dujardin 2012 Olympic Dressage (cropped).JPG
- **caption**: Dujardin in 2012
- **fullname**: Charlotte Susan Jane Dujardin
- **birth place**: London Borough of Enfield, Enfield, Greater London, England
- **height**: 1.70 m
- **weight**: 61 kg
- **sport**: Equestrianism, Equestrian dressage
- **team**: British Dressage Federation
- **turnedpro**: 2011
- **coach**: Carl Hester, Ian Cast
- **highestranking**: 1
- **show-medals**: no
- **medaltemplates**: