Regardless of what he did, he’s obviously not in a good place. It is a sad situation. Did he screw people over? Sure. (although I’d assume a lot of them do. I don’t think it’s uncommon.) Was he an ass for doing so? Absolutely. Did he lie about cancer? We don’t know that or what he actually had and likely will never know. Do I feel sorry for him? No, I feel disappointed that it got to this and he got himself in this mess. If you owe someone money, you pay them back.
However, I don’t enjoy watching someone suffer mentally. It’s a terrible headspace to be in. I’m not defending him in any way but this situation is just so sad.
Then I heard an Audible Pop. I think it was my brain.
So now Pony thinks, if that is still possible after my brain pop, that they are going to paint themselves black and white and stand along the road with a sign that reads EAT MOR CHIKIN.
I don’t think anyone knows what the actual state of his health is right now. Except that he clearly hasn’t undergone a laryngectomy given he was speaking with reporters on the phone, and two days ago he told the Toronto Star he was going to continue with 10 horses, and enjoy time on his boat.
I’m not going to make any assumptions from that Facebook post. Except that he is really agitated at present.
I have no idea how this ends, but I will hazard a guess that at some point soon he will not be able to satisfy financial judgements and will file for bankruptcy. That seems inevitable.
I’m not here to defend Eric’s cocaine use but I have said it before and will say it again he’s far from the only one. Backside of tracks, show jumping, eventing…I can’t speak for rn because I’m removed from the horse world now (thank god honestly) but drug use and specifically cocaine was common. I would not call it a performance enhancing drug but clearly a banned substance with short withdrawal so getting caught more than once is really stupid.
The shit with Ron Southern felt personal back then but maybe he knew something we didn’t. IDK.
Long term cocaine use will fry your brain. Has to be a factor in all this madness.
I think Lamaze is pretty clearly lying about a lot of things related to his health, but I just want to point out that there are a variety of voice prosthesis out there that people who’ve undergone laryngectomies can use to communicate. My dad used one and was able to talk pretty clearly and we had phone conversations quite often, he also enjoyed using his electronic sounding voice to mess with telemarketers. That said, people who have had complete laryngectomies wind up breathing through a hole in their neck which generally makes going out on a boat a lot riskier than for others, since they can’t hold their breath if they wind up in the water…
Link no longer available. Sorry. Will attempt to summarize but saw it after coming in from a late photo shoot compounded by horse show hangover.
Three layers: repeat of statement about horse sale fraud, words describing different equestrian and other groups (parents, other trainers…) and a women reacting to the statements as each group. Nonchalant until gets to Canadian supreme court and then reacts. EL never mentioned.
I think that does explain away some of the issues there, but it does not explain the just plain not words. Speak to text frequently puts in wrong words, but it always uses actual words.
Thanks for sharing about what is involved with a laryngectomy. I hope your dad is doing alright health wise at this time. I would imagine one of the reporters who spoke to Lamaze via phone would have indicated if it sounded like he was using a voice prosthesis, so I Sam admittedly assuming he doesn’t have one at this time. And that’s a good point about the risks of going out on a boat for someone who has a hole in their neck they use for respiration.
Years ago when I was going through breast cancer treatment I was simultaneously dealing with serious thyroid issues and preparing for a thyroidectomy… we weren’t sure at the time if thyroid cancer would be present once they did the surgery and full pathology. I was speaking with my radiation oncologist about it during a breast cancer related appointment, and I told her that though the thyroid issue was not good, I wasn’t really worried about it since thyroid cancer has a much much better prognosis with respect to survival than what was involved with my breast cancer. My radiation oncologist very gently and kindly told me I was a bit ignorant of how awful many types of head and neck cancers can be, even if they have high survival rates, those numbers don’t actually capture how challenging the various surgeries and radiation can be on the patients who suffer from various head and neck cancers.
Anyway… the point is that faking brain cancer is deplorable… but so is the obvious fact that he also attempted to fake laryngeal cancer. It’s just so offensive to people who have really experienced such awful illnesses.
The Toronto Star article said that the lawyer who just resigned from the case in Ontario due to the fraudulent documents represented him for years and years…
“Tim Danson has been Lamaze’s lawyer and friend for 30 years and by his side through his challenging years with the Olympic drug-test trials.”
Just worth noting.
Elsewhere I found this link and description of the bans and circumstances…
“he tested positive for cocaine right before the 1996 Atlanta Olympic Games. His four year suspension was lowered to only 7 months because he had taken the cocaine on personal time and had not used it for performance enhancement. This was not the only time Lamaze tested positive for illegal substances. In 2000 he tested positive for items found in cold medicine and diet pills that are on the list of banned substances. He was banned for life from the Olympic Games. He would also later be randomly drug tested during his suspension and test positive for cocaine. With the help of his lawyer they were able to get the lifetime ban lifted due to the fact that the substances were not labeled correctly on the product he had taken and the cocaine was during his lifetime ban which made it irrelevant to his charges.”
