On Wednesday evening, the documentary Operation X: The Secrets of the Horse Billionaire is shown on Danish TV2 and the channel’s play.
For a month, a reporter on TV2 worked as a horse groomer at Helgstrand Dressage and documented systematic mismanagement and torture-like riding with a hidden camera. The documentary shows several horses with unhealed wounds from spurs.
Despite the injuries, the horses are ridden in the same way day after day. There are also horses with strong stripes and marks from blows from rods.
Admits assault at the facility
When customers are visiting, the staff is ordered to put blankets on the horses that have rod marks. The wounds caused by spurs are dressed with shoe polish.
– We ride 350 horses, 10,000 passes in a month, that’s a lot. The culture if we see there, it’s not the culture I want to see, says Andreas Helgstrand to Danish TV2 after watching the program, according to the newspaper Ridsport.
The dressage star is asked if violence has been used in the business:
– When I see that film, yes, he says.
Tried to stop the documentary
Even before the documentary, divided into two 50-minute episodes, reached television viewers, it has stirred emotions and had consequences. Ulf Helgstrand, father of Andreas, has taken a timeout as chairman of the Danish Equestrian Association.
Jakob Blicher Ravnsbo has taken over the task for the time being and the confederation’s board is holding an extraordinary meeting during the evening, writes tidningenridsport.se.
Andreas Helgstrand’s efforts to try to stop the documentary have twice been rejected by Danish courts.
Has heavy merits
Andreas Helgstrand has represented Denmark at several international championships, most recently during the EC in Germany in September where Denmark took team bronze. Among other things, he also has a team bronze from the Olympics and a WC silver on his track record. And has participated several times in the international horse show in the Friends arena, but is not in this year’s competition, which will be decided in less than two weeks.