DUTCH dressage rider Adelinde Cornelissen has reacted to online speculation that her Parzival suffered a hairline fracture of the jaw by posting photographs of the 19-year-old gelding rolling and looking fit and well.

“I got a lot of questions how Parzi is doing now,” she posted on her Facebok page.

“Well, here are the pictures! Looks to me Parzi is enjoying himself again!And just to get it off my chest: no hairline fractures of any kind! I guess some people didn’t think the story was interesting enough...”

The rider was forced to retire from the opening dressage competition mid-test when she felt that her team bronze and individual silver medal-winning horse was not well enough to compete.

“It started yesterday morning, I came to the stable and his cheek was completely swollen and it appeared he was bitten by a spider or a mosquito or whatever….he had a fever, so we managed to get that down yesterday, eight or nine hours on liquids and everything was good, his temperature was down again, and this morning also.

“So I discussed it with the team vet and he said go ahead, give it a try, but then he felt totally empty in the ring, and I didn’t want to push him through this - he didn’t deserve that,” Cornelissen explained at the post-competition press conference.

Cornelissen posted on social media at the time: “When I entered I already felt he was giving his utmost and being the fighter he is, he never gives up... But in order to protect him, I gave up.

“My buddy, my friend, the horse that has given everything for me his whole life does not deserve this.... So I saluted and left the arena.”

Criticism

Cornelissen was at the centre of a barrage of online criticism in which she was accused of riding the horse with a hairline fracture allegedly incurred through the use of rollkur. The practice, which involves hyperflexion of the neck, is banned by the FEI.

Parzival underwent x-rays at Rio when vets were investigating the cause of his illness.

However it is understood that a journalist may have confused the hairline fracture of the hock suffered by Simon Delestre’s show jumping mount Ryan Des Hayettes with the illness of Parzival in one online Olympic report which was later edited.