I mean I think there has been one or two cases of proven sabotage (I went down an FEI Tribunal rabbit hole a couple of years ago) but in that case it wasn’t at such a big event as the Europeans and dealt with a known dispute between two parties. In this case it really sounds like someone on the team gave the horse a dose of previcox.
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It’s called Icarus. Highly recommended.
However, please keep in mind that while Icarus focuses on Russia, systematized doping (to varying degrees) occurs just about everywhere. ‘Everywhere’ includes the US, Canada and the UK. The Russians just got caught at it in a very bad way but there’s also whistleblowers in China, Kenya, Ethiopia, Team GB cycling, etc. that have spoken of systematized doping programs. It simply isn’t true that nice white North Americans and western Europeans don’t dope. They sure as heck do.
The country that exports the most doping doctors and coaches around the world is… Italy. The WADA banned-for-life list for support staff - this would be coaches and doctors involved in doping athletes - has approximately 130 names on it. Half of those names are Italians. That’s a staggering number from one country.
(The explanation for this from everyone I’ve talked to in sport is ‘Well, you know, Italians cheat.’ The funny thing is that there’s always a huge deep breath before ‘…cheat’, because they’re afraid to say this to someone who clearly has Italian roots. :lol: )
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Nope.
You can check who gets tested here.
At the Euros, the following horses were tested and found to have no prohibited substances:
(list is in caps on doc, so excuse the screechy big letters)
ACSI HARRY BELAFONTE NED
HORSEWARE STELLOR REBOUND IRL
HORSEWARE HALE BOB OLD GER
REALITY 39 SWE
QUEFIRA DE L’ORMEAU ITA
SPACE JET AUT
CAPTAIN HERO CZE
FISCHERROCANA FST GER
VESTERVANGS ARAMI DEN
DERVISH BLR
ALLSTAR B GBR
BULANA GBR
GRAND SUPREME POL
ONFIRE SUI
Apparently, Krajewski’s horse is the only positive finding at Euros.
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It will be interesting to see what they come up with for how the “sabotage” occurred. That would require some pretty careful orchestration - how would the saboteur know the horse is even going to be selected for testing? :lol:
Seems far more likely that someone involved with the horse did the dosing, perhaps innocently unaware that it was against rules or intentionally and hoping not to get caught. Time will tell, along with a second test.
Cheating is rampant, even at the smurf level. I had a “pro” tell me to do it earlier this year for my now-retired horse. When I pointed out that it was prohibited, pro basically said yeah but it’s not like you’ll get caught. And let’s not even mention “calming” supplements and the debate over the “spirit” of the rules…
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Remember that at WEG in 2014, Maxime Livio got dinged for ACE in his horse. People do get caught at really big competitions. I think he cried “sabotage” also at first.
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My biggest clue is the fact that it was a big enough dose to be therapeutic. That’s prima facie for me that it was intentionally given.
Riders are making all sort of noise about cameras and making sure the stables are secure.
Honestly, the people who are responsible need to be just that.
Don’t let a lot of people hang around your FEI level horse. Be secure and practice secure things. Don’t let strangers pet him, wash out and secure your feed tubs and water buckets, don’t let the vets touch the horse unless you’re there and make sure you are watching what they are doing and checking and double checking everything. Close the stall doors and watch where the bridle is hung, blankets are placed and tossed, grooming tools…etc. The best grooms are darn careful about where they go with the horses and what they let them do and who is allowed around. Cameras yeah but responsible management, much more.
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According to this story in H & H,
However Polly was later exonerated by the Judicial Committee of the FEI in a statement that read: “There was no deliberate attempt by Polly Phillipps to affect the performance of Coral Cove.”
http://www.horseandhound.co.uk/news/polly-vere-phillipps-coral-cove-put-down-543921
viney, the full Coral Cove report (which I think was a GB, not FEI thing) used to be available online. Might still be. It was a true head-spinner. It wasn’t just the doping, either. The horse was unsound and PP was trying to hide it from the team. Bizarre incidents ensued, like she took the horse in to the team vet examination and then when the vet touched the horse, she jumped on it bareback and rode away.
She also bragged to her teammates about giving the horse (prohibited) aspirin after XC. These teammates mentioned in in their testimony to the investigative committee.
Her fellow eventing riders were very clearly holding her at fault, even before the report. These articles from the Independent go into more detail. She was confronted publicly at various times by other riders, due to, in the words of Mark Todd, ‘a load of lies’.
The reasons she was cleared was because there was no evidence of her having injected the horse because (1) she denied it, and (2) she’d tricked the vet into injecting the horse (and then he didn’t follow up with a medication slip). Meanwhile, the vet admitted injecting the horse and not following protocol, although he was adamant that he did not inject the horse with as much aspirin as was found in the lab tests. He was also adamant that he did not want to inject the horse, that there were other horses he was much more concerned about getting through the trot-up and that he didn’t understand why she was so insistent on this.
But this was clearly her plan, to leave the team vet holding the bag if she got caught. IIRC, the vet’s career was really derailed by this. Not great behavior on his part to not follow protocol but he didn’t realize he was being duped.
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There’s no way it was innocent. Everyone involved with FEI horses knows it’s zero tolerance, and you certainly couldn’t give the horse a therapeutic dose of a NSAID like previcox. I’d understand if it was for say a national level class and they were misinformed on the allowed dose, but everyone with FEI horses knows don’t give them anything
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This makes it even more likely that it was intentionally administered by someone on the team. Yes, horses were more likely to be tested there than during, say, our typical USEA event … but someone doping their horse still has a very good chance of getting away with it, which gives them incentive to do it.
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It’s really shocked me a lot. Ridiculous!
This is why many racing barns employ night watchmen.
I don’t think this case is an example of cheating being “rampant.” Maybe I’m being naive, but no one riding at the championship level with half a brain would try to cheat in that manner. It makes zero sense.
I don’t know about the culture in Europe, but I think horse people on the whole have become very casual with pharmaceuticals. I don’t necessarily think that is a problem, within reason, but it certainly doesn’t jive well with ultra-sensitive competition testing. A previcox tab (or paste) is far from nefarious “doping.” It’s entirely plausible there was either a mix-up in administration or a well-meaning, green employee made a mistake. And while sabotage seems less likely, it’s certainly a drug that would be easy to sabotage with due to it’s prevalence.
Bottom line, I’m inclined to believe her.
Cross contamination is something very easy to happen for and FEI horse and the zero tolerance…but this isn’t that. This is more than a trace amount of forbidden substance…this is a true dose of the amount in a timing situation that indicates it would be given to enhance performance. That is very different than a lot of the other cases we have seen recently.
I do think that for big championship events…it wouldn’t be hard at all to install cameras in the barns.
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Installing cameras is easy. These days it is not difficult to obtain a small form factor camera for security purposes.
Why would people want to risk taking a therapeutic dose of that kind of medication, knowing there is a high probability they could get tested?
The cycling analogy isn’t an exact one because although Lance doped and so did a lot of people on his team, they had people on staff who were very careful with the protocols they used in order to stay one step ahead of the drug testers. timing and amounts were critical. some of the info came out after people admitted to cheating but those people weren’t necessary caught even though they were tested.
Fior people who have been in an FEI barn at a show like this, how hard would it be for someone to drop a tablet in a bucket when no one is watching? Is there a possibility that a devious person from another team could hang around, waiting for that moment when no one is watching, and if that happens then they seize the moment?
Cross-contamination was not so easy at Strzegom. The European Eventing Championships were a stand-alone competition: 77 entries in a 3* competition.
All barns were FEI barns with horses running under FEI rules.
The German horse clearly got a therapeutic dose of previcox at Strzegom. It did not ingest the previcox prior to being in the FEI barn.
Krajewski was the drop score in dressage. The dressage leader was Bettina Hoy on a score of 24 but she didn’t complete on XC, which meant that Germany no longer had a drop score. If the remaining team horses didn’t complete, Germany would fail to complete a team.
You could probably look at the lab work and find the window in which the previcox was given. That would be interesting. Or maybe no one wants to ask those questions.
The gold-winning team GBR had 2 horses tested. Sweden took bronze and 1 team horse was tested. Interesting that 3 German team horses were selected for testing, especially when there were additional German entries running as individuals. Some nations were not tested at all, teams or individuals.
(sometimes drug testing is not as random as it seems)
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Cross contamination in trace amounts typically happens at home…long before you are in the FEI barns. Someone doesn’t rinse a feed bucket…or a horse gets put in the wrong stall for minute and licks the bowl…the wrong shampoo used or some other stupidity. We start stripping out things that test from the barn (that we can) and getting super careful months before a show…especially if there are horses of supplements or medications that test in the barn. But you can see how cross contamination would happen.
But then we are talking about trace amounts…not the large dose. My point was this was NOT cross-contamination like most of us are typically worrying about. This was a full dose. They said in the article that they could tell by the dose that it was given late on Friday or early Saturday…so they have already don that work and asked those questions.
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I got your point. I just used your quote and an entree to explaining that cross-contamination was highly unlikely in this case as the horse was pre-tested and then was quarantined in an FEI-only barn at an FEI-only show.
Of course, there is the possibility that someone intended to dope their own horse and somehow doped the wrong horse, which would be very dopey doping.
I’m quite surprised that not all medal winners are tested. Out of 77 total (teams and individual) entries, 15 were tested. That’s 19%. 6 of those tested were on medal-winning teams.
So if your team is in a position to medal if the three riders who complete XC are able to SJ, you stand a favorable chance to not be tested. You might win a medal. You might get tested but the odds are in your favor not to be tested. If you do get tested, the team loses the medal and the rider/horse get to serve a suspension usually with some retroactive stuff like time already applied to the suspension. And, of course, most of that suspension will be served in the off-season, when you’re not planning to compete anyway. A rather toothless punishment.
I can see why some would see this as a chance worth taking.
Sadly, equestrian sport seems about as serious as most other sports on cracking down on doping. Which is to say not really serious at all.
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I’m surprised too. I would think they would test all medal winners and then random ones. But I suppose it does cost money to test.
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It does but in this case, the testers and equipment were already there.
Anti-doping efforts suffer more from a lack of will than from a lack of money.
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Don’t they send the samples to a lab? I thought that was the high expense more than collection.
