What is a drug? Who are the cheats?

What is a drug is by no means clear cut. Prior to the WEG in Stockholm in 1990, it was considered perfectly acceptable to give your horse a sachet of bute (that’s one sachet, more got you into trouble) at a competition – a bit like the Aussie formula of a cup of tea, a bex and a good lie down. However the Swedes had a total ban on drugs like bute, and the cost of getting the WEG off to a brilliant start was that bute was now a drug in any quantity.

Not that this deterred riders, since the 1990 prohibition there have been a steady progression of riders from all over the world (including lots of Aussies) who have been sanctioned to using anti-inflammatories, like bute. One of the more spectacular occasions was in 1989, when in an effort to show that Melbourne could host the equestrian section of the Olympic Games, UK eventers, Lucinda Green and Ian Stark were invited, with their horses, to compete at Werribee 3DE. It was not a complete success. Lucinda was carted off in an ambulance after falling at the fifth fence, and Stark ‘won’ the competition on Foxy V, only to be disqualified when the horse proved positive to bute, yep he’d used too much… it took some years before they finally removed his name from the leaderboard. This proof that Stark was a ‘drug cheat’ did not affect his career, he went on to compete at the Sydney Games, retired in 2007 in a blaze of platitudes, and was inducted into the Scottish Hall of Fame in 2010. He was an expert commentator for television at the Rio Olympics.

One of the more spectacular equestrian drug cases arose in 1997, at the European Showjumping championships in Mannheim. Hugo Simon’s groom was caught red-handed holding a syringe to ET’s neck between the two final rounds of competition. According to German chief steward, Hans Wall Meier, when he asked: “What are you doing?” the groom dropped the syringe into the straw. Meier called chief veterinarian Peter Cronau who immediately sealed and froze the syringe.

The groom denied using and hiding the syringe, Simon claimed ignorance, saying he was nowhere near the barn at the time, and later stormed out of a press conference following the medal ceremony where he was awarded the individual silver medal. One month later, it was confirmed that the testing laboratory at Newmarket had found no banned substance in either the blood or urine of ET, so Simon was acquitted of doping!!! Those were the days… days when the press was well trained and provided with very pleasant press rooms, in return for reporting how lovely the sponsors were and how charming the competitors – even the arrogant and totally charmless Simon. Our on-the-spot reporter at the time, told me she didn’t know what to do, so trained she was to only report through rose-tinted glasses. Include the information in your story, says I.

The Athens Games of 2004 produced some fairly explosive results and these could not easily be hushed up or buried in layers of FEI bureaucracy.

The showjumping gold medallist at Athens, Waterford Crystal, ridden by Ireland’s Cian O’Connor, tested positive for Zuclopenthixol (clopixol), Fluphenazine, Guanabenz and Reserpine. The FEI officially disqualified O’Connor on June 10, 2005, a decision that also led to the disqualification of the entire Irish show jumping team. The story got steadily more like a paperback thriller, when someone (the Irish mafia?) broke into the Irish equestrian federation office, and pinched the B sample – luckily there was another B in another lab.

Had an atypically out-of-it steward at Aachen at the Euros last year, not run in front of Mr O’Connor as he lined up a fence, the Irishman would have been competing in the team at Rio…

Along with O’Connor, two high profile Germans returned positives at Athens although for nothing quite as exotic as the Irishman’s little brew, which apparently contained medication for human psychosis!

Ludger Beerbaum was disqualified when Goldfever proved positive to betamethasone. Ludger protested that the substance was in an ointment used to treat a skin irritation on the horse, and the FEI Judicial Committee accepted that the substance was indeed for a medical condition and did not enhance the horse’s performance. However, even though Beerbaum did not purposefully try to enhance his horse’s performance, Goldfever did have a prohibited substance in his system, and was therefore disqualified – which cost the Germans team gold. Bettina Hoy’s eventer, Ringwood Cockatoo, also returned a positive to the anti-histamine, diphenhydramin. The Austrian eventer, Foxy ridden by Harald Riedl, returned a positive for flunixin, which made for four positives and a degree of shock-horror-amaze.

At the time, Paul Schockemöhle editorialised in Z Magazine: 

“Some 30 years ago, when I was a representative of the international showjujmping riders, I had a talk with the British Prince Phillip about threshold values we would like to see applied for the medication of horses. Prince Phillip was the president of the FEI at the time, but also a practical horseman; he had been around the driving sport long enough to know what kinds of things could befall a competition horse.”

“The competition sport knows many minor mishaps, which, when treated with a common household remedy or something like that, make life easier for the competition horses and even tip the balance between starting and not starting. I would elaborate on the words ‘something like that’, for old-fashioned household remedies are nowadays often no longer available in their natural form. They have been improved, modernised, adapted or their lifespan has been extended. With what? Well, take a look at the marmalade on the breakfast table and try reading the label. Do you understand the meaning of what it is made up of? Additives, emulsions, aromas and the rest.”

“Obviously the Prince is a horseman acquainted with daily practice and besides, a descendant of the Sleeswijk royal house. Up in the north, over there, they are on the level, practical, grown up among horses. And so the principle of the threshold values we wanted was worked out by the FEI veterinary committee and accepted by the presidium.”

“But things developed, both in the science and every day practice. Old threshold values had to be adapted and determined anew because of the growing amount of new medicines and new doping appeared on the market. And there is no doping that the lab does not catch up with. Because, unfortunately, the line between a remedy, a painkiller and a stimulant, is not always clear. As soon as a remedy acquired the reputation of (also) being a stimulant or a painkiller, it gets popular. That is human nature.”

“And, in no time at all, science will have found a way to trace the new doping in blood or urine samples. That is human intellect. And because in the race between nature and intellect, there can be no winner, the FEI created the zero option. That is human society. And the finer the sieve the higher the price tag. When it gets too expensive and/or complicated, the organization can no longer cope and resorts to an absolute ban on all alien substances.”

“Just imagine you are a professional tennis player. You are playing at Roland Garros and it is going to be all or nothing. The night before the big match you get a screaming headache. So you take an aspirin and eight days later your name is struck off the Grand Slam list, simply because they found an alien substance in your urine. That is not the way it works in the human sports; there it is meticulously laid down which pharmaceutics are remedies and which are doping.”

“In the world of our loyal quadrupeds, everything is doping. Many a horse cannot even be clipped without a sedative. Eight days later: ‘Positive A-sample in the drug inspection’. At this moment Athens is a much-debated highlight, or rather an all-time low. Not only for Germany but for the whole horse world. The zero option does not make any difference between doping and medicine. Read: between a fraud and a skilled groom. That is not justice, it is injustice.”

“It is a complicated affair. That is why determining a list with threshold values is a time consuming and costly matter. But my question to the FEI is: are our horses and riders not worth it? If you think that they are, then please put an end to this zero option as soon as possible. If you feel that they are not, then that is a vote of non-confidence for the entire horse sport.”

Athens was a worry but Hong Kong was to get even murkier…

At Hong Kong, seven out of fifty horses tested, proved positive, 14% – an astonishing figure. Four human athletes were busted for positives out 2,057 competitors… imagine the uproar if 14% of the human athletes came up positive, that would have been 288 violators. There are times when the media’s indifference to equestrian sport is a positive.

Four showjumping horses tested positive for the banned substance capsaicin, and were disqualified from the individual show jumping final. Apparently the Hong Kong Jockey Club developed a blood test for capsaicin as a favor to the Olympic organizers, and riders were lured (entrapped) into a false feeling of security when they were told that the heat sensor testers would not be used. The offenders were: Ireland’s Denis Lynch, riding Lantinus, Norway’s Tony Andre Hansen on Camiro, Brazil’s Bernardo Alves on Chupa Chup and Germany’s Christian Ahlmann on Coster.

The American dressage rider, Courtney King-Dye also returned a positive at Athens. Her horose Mythilus tested positive for the non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug Felbinac, classified as a Medication A Prohibited Substances under the FEI Equine Prohibited List – as a result the rider and the US team, were disqualified.

The London Games were in terms of positives, clean… why do I have this sneaking feeling that maybe the vets and the scientists are a jump ahead of the labs?

While Rio was also declared clean, some of the stars of Rio have also been in trouble in the past. In 2009, Rio silver medallist, Isabell Werth, was suspended for six months following a positive doping test for the psychotropic drug Flupheazine, in her small tour horse, Whisper. In 2014, Isabell was again banned for six months following a positive test for cimetidine in El Santo. Is she a ‘drug cheat’, or just a passionate competitor who sometimes will push the envelope?

There were other riders who featured in the medals at Rio who have had troubles with the rules. American showjumper, McLain Ward was suspended by FEI and the AHSA, after it was reported that, during a bandage/boot control inspection at Aachen, two small, pointy pieces of plastic had been seen to fall from Beneton’s right front boot… and Ward has been suspended at least once for a drug violation, a positive for isoxsuprine with Quick Star II Z, back in January 2006.

Another of the showjumping stars at Rio, Meredith Michaels-Beerbaum, has also had her brush with the law. Her horse, Shutterfly returned a positive swab for Acepromazine at the World Cup final in Milan, in April 2004 – and on April 7, 2005 (!!!!) the FEI Judicial Committee, at a hearing that lasted ten hours, accepted that ‘certain procedural anomalies occurred that could be interpreted to affect the PR’s due process rights to verify the applicable procedures and results. These included particularly a limitation on the ability of the PR to witness the B sample analysis, and Meredith was ‘cleared’ although required to pay her own costs. As my late mother-in-law was wont to say, fancy. 

I guess by now you are thinking, but what does this have to do with Sue Hearn and her positive test at Rotterdam for an anti-inflammatory, Meloxicam. Well for a start, if Sue did give the horse Meloxicam, it is not the crime of the century. I have no doubt that you gentle reader, have given your horse the odd non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug from time-to-time for the best possible reason, to make the horse more comfortable. I hope you have never competed with its aid, but really am not too fussed if you did. There are however, a number of substances, stimulants, sedatives, extreme pain killers, that would cause me to worry about you. If I learnt that Sue deliberately gave Remmington Meloxicam in the run up to Rotterdam, I’d would be sad that she had done something foolish, dumb but not wicked.

But this is not the case with Sue.

Sue Hearn and her team swear that they did not give the horse Meloxicam in the run up to Rotterdam, in fact they swear they have never ever used the stuff, ever. They swear the horse is sound. As Sue’s husband Andrew has pointed out, if Sue had been worried about returning a positive, or had worries about her horse’s soundness, all she had to do was take the Kelly Layne option, and not start at Rotterdam – if she had done that she would have gone straight into the team instead of only being called up when Kelly’s horse was vetted out.

I like to think that after a lifetime in the business, I have a journalist’s instinct for when people are telling the truth and when they are lying. My gut feeling is that Sue and Andrew are telling the truth… and that really does open up a can of worms.

Why am I not sure the EA enquiry will get to the bottom of it?

– CH