This is one of the images of the Tokyo Olympics.
While leading the modern pentathlon competition in scoring, Germany's Annika Schleu saw every chance for a medal slip away in the equestrian event.
At the top of the classification before the riding test, she had had all the trouble in the world to control her horse, giving it many blows.
This then multiplied the refusals of obstacles, leading to the fall in the standings of the German.
Annika Schleu and her trainer Kim Raisner are accused of "animal cruelty" and "complicity in animal cruelty", according to a statement from the German Association for the Protection of Animals (Deutscher Tierschutzbund), which therefore lodged a complaint.
His coach excluded from the Olympics
His coach Kim Raisner was then excluded from the Olympics by the International Federation (UIPM) for having punched the horse.
During the test, she had been heard encouraging Annika Schleu to "hit" the animal, drawn according to the rules of modern pentathlon.
Rules which will perhaps be modified after a record number of refusals of jumps on the part of the horses.
“Of course, an athlete focused on Olympic gold is under enormous stress at this point, but that is no excuse for animal cruelty,” opined Thomas Schröder, president of the complainant association. Annika Schleu had explained herself in the columns of the daily Die Zeit, assuring that she had not been "extremely hard" with the horse while acknowledging that she could have been "a little more calm and reasonable". Kim Raisner, for his part, told SID, a subsidiary of AFP, that Annika Schleu had "not tortured the horse in any way".
