Four horses from the Republican Guard, including the one ridden by French pentathlete Élodie Clouvel, silver medalist at the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, will be decorated on Monday, AFP learned on Friday from the gendarmerie. These horses will receive the bronze national defense medal, which rewards particularly honorable services rendered by the military. Dogs, and even pigeons during the First World War, have already received such a medal, but this is the first time that horses will be decorated.
The Republican Guard had made twenty horses available to the Olympic pentathletes as part of a partnership with the International Modern Pentathlon Federation. Four of them – Dicton de Vesquerie, Dallones des Dunes, Fast du Pré and Fly de Vesquerie – will receive the national defense medal for their Olympic performances. Chaired by General Charles-Antoine Thomas, commander of the Republican Guard, the ceremony will be held in the Célestins district, headquarters of the Republican Guard headquarters, in the 4th arrondissement of Paris, before the departure of the cavalry regiment for November 11 commemorations.
On Fly de Vesquerie, Élodie Clouvel, who is a gendarmerie captain, won her second Olympic silver medal in modern pentathlon during the 2024 Olympics, eight years after having already reached the second step of the podium in Rio.
