PARIS (AFP) – Charlotte Dujardin's withdrawal for whipping a horse repeatedly has heaped the pressure on her mentor Carl Hester who must rally his teammates if Britain are to regain the Olympic team dressage title from 2012.
At 57, Hester will be the oldest British rider and competing in his seventh Games – he was once the youngest ever when he rode in the 1992 Barcelona Olympics.
Hester, who gave Dujardin her first job in the sport as a groom in 2007, roundly condemned her actions in a letter.
Dujardin became known as "The Girl on the Dancing Horse", due to her partnership with Hester's horse Valegro, winning double Olympic gold in 2012 followed by another gold and silver in Rio four years later.
Now, though, having once told AFP he is sometimes too laid-back and needs a "kick up the bum", he has to reboot the morale of his two teammates ahead of next Tuesday's competition.
He will team up with 2022 world champion Charlotte Fry – the 28-year-old was part of the team which took bronze in Tokyo in 2021 – and Becky Moody, 44.
Dressage is never short of glamorous surroundings for the riders to perform in but the Paris Games venue will take some beating – the grounds of the Chateau de Versailles, built for Louis XIV, the "Sun King".
"Yes! I very much want to be the Sun King," a chuckling Hester told AFP, speaking before the Dujardin revelations.
"Versailles, what a stunning backdrop."
Hester already had a gold postbox to his name on the island of Sark, where he was brought up -- all British gold medallists from the London Games in 2012 were given the honour.
It has been quite some journey for Hester to the extent he is to be the subject of a biopic, "Stride".
"It goes up to 2012 and that is very lovely," he said.
"The producers approached me years ago, by the way, it did not just materialise now."
Hester said he only had one "no no" for the producers.
"They wanted my dad on a horse, but my dad would not fit on the horse, he would piss himself laughing.
"The next bit is being able to sell it."
'Suffer from elitism?'
Hester admits he often has to pinch himself at his unlikely rise from driving tourists round in horse-drawn carriages on Sark to being widely acknowledged as one of the best riders and trainers in the dressage world.
What's more he does all this out of a stunning stables in Gloucestershire – jokingly referred to as 'Hestershire' – where peacocks, boxer dogs and horses mix freely.
"I do pinch myself, I often do," he said.
"It is slightly surreal being in my situation, the film, the book, remembering your journey. It is lovely, it has been lovely.
"My story is inspirational to other kids not just the success but how you got there, to be on teams rather than just the winning which is wonderful of course."
The good-natured Hester's hackles are rarely raised but he abhors the assumption you can only succeed in the sport if you come from a moneyed background.
"It is so frustrating that the question that often crops up is 'does your sport suffer from elitism'?
"It really is frustrating. My story, for instance, coming from a family that could not afford horses, showed there is another way of doing it.
"My family had no involvement or interest in horses. I do not know where my interest came from.
"My family are more surprised than I am where I ended up."