This has been my reaction. There’s not even a hint of “sorry I was caught” much less “sorry for what I’ve done” in that rant.
While saying that we hope he gets the help that he needs is all well and good, I’d add that, given his past behavior and the allegations of criminal conduct, perhaps that help is best found behind a locked door? If he’s not mentally ill, then it seems that door should have bars… If all of the allegations from the numerous lawsuits are true (not to mention his cancer act), he’s not a “good citizen” and could be considered a “menace to society.”
I actually feel really sorry for him now, after reading all of this and that facebook post. It really makes you wonder how he grew up that it led to this. Not a popular sentiment, I’m sure.
That big nearly-incoherent post by EL (I did read it, and it actually does tell a continuing story of his persecution and harrassment by the FEI conspiracy against EL) is definitely a symptom of something.
But, ungenerously on my part, that post reads like another day in the life of a grifter, to me. He’s being accused in a way that could be a problem for his lifestyle, he’s feeling a bit cornered, so he has to set the accusers back on their heels so that he can continue what he does in life.
I would like to witness his actual behavior and demeanor, in person, before, during and after the making of that post. I’ll bet he’s doing rather better than the post portrays.
Interesting that the numerous lawsuits don’t seem to be on his radar in that post. Just the things that could stop him from riding or being involved in an FEI competition, on any given day.
Threatening suicide is another grifter ploy, once they have been found out. Of course any threat to harm oneself or others has to be treated as real. But it’s very possible that this is also part of the EL maintain-the-lifestyle package.
But of course that’s just random speculation by an uninvolved internet stranger (me).
IMO – The record through the years shows that this guy lives for the substances he ingests, over and above all other things. It is more important to him than riding in the Olympics.
IMO, it is safest to hold no expectation that he will ever control it better than he has to date. If anything, age makes old habits even more solid and intransigent to change.
This is what he does, it is how he gets through his days.
I wonder if he has ever been to a inpatient full-detox rehab. Even if so, I doubt he has ever maintained without his substances for very long.
With apologies to all the Canadians, I doubt EL would have lasted so long in any other nation’s Olympic/national level team universe. This whole saga says as much about the miserable state of the Canadian team leadership as it does about EL. It’s been a subject of discussion on COTH from time to time for many years. That the team selectors play favorites (favorites that can change abruptly), and EL has often been a favorite, regardless of his record with drugs.
I agree.
It is a sad fact that when an adult is completely off the rails, but refuses help for whatever reason, very often there is not much more that can be done. Even adults with more diagnosed mental health conditions than EL. They can go on full self-destruct of their lives, and the bystanders can only protect themselves.
We don’t actually know if he does have medically diagnosed mental health conditions as that is private information, and if so, he hasn’t shared it.
Seeking a medical diagnosis for a mental health condition usually has to be done by the patient themselves. I don’t know about the legal and medical ethics situation in Canada, but that is usually true in the U.S. A doctor won’t diagnose a patient who isn’t volunteering.
Most jurisdictions have a procedure for a temporary involuntary ‘psyche hold’. LE will take the person to the designated facility. I haven’t had to learn how that works and can be invoked, but I don’t think it’s an easy thing, and seems to be only for someone who is continually a physical threat to the neighborhood and/or community where they live.
There may be some legal path to appointing someone to have involuntary control over their lives, a guardianship or something of the kind. But that’s also hard to pull through the legal process, especially if the subject party is independently mobile and speaking for themselves. (Britney Spears was an exceptional, rare case, and not a model for anyone else.)
And in the end, to pursue any kind of control over an adult who is mentally disintegrating, someone in that person’s life has to commit themselves to the process and keep pressing it. Sometimes that effort is what is missing, someone who cares enough and is invested enough to take that role. It is not an easy one and very few people will do it for a person who isn’t integral to their own lives.
I see it the same, based on life experience. I think he is far, far from his rock bottom. I think that entire crazy post is today’s part of the grift. Which will go on and on, because this is how he lives.
If he feels cornered at any time, then he erupts in verbiage explaining all the great things he has done, all the people he has helped (always dropping names of respected people), mourns the ungratefulness and sets forth lots of ‘evidence’ of the big conspiracy against him by the mighty and powerful. It’s him against the whole cruel world.
There are certain things that he does consistently, documented over the many years – ride well and work his way into the elite levels; scam people out of money; and pour out agonies of self-pity of soldiering on through greivous medical conditions, with no factual support for said conditions.
IMO, that post looks persecuted and disordered because it is supposed to look that way. He doesn’t need any craft or editing to make it that way. That is just how he rolls. He can spew it out at any moment. That’s what I think. I doubt that he is in the physical health freefall that he is describing.
Betting that this gradually dies out of the public eye from a lack of ongoing dramatic events. And a few years from now there will be another round of EL drama for some fresh outrage that manages to hit the media.
Apologies for being completely unsympathetic. It’s a holdover from unrelated life experiences.
I did come to the same conclusion that he is in the midst of an ongoing conflict with the FEI, or was recently, and it has to do with drug testing. Soooo… it seems there is something to the rumors that the FEI forced his retirement in early 2022 for dodging drug tests.
It was so interesting to me that he says he was targeted or singled out for the drug testing by the FEI. Like, of course you were! If you have a history of illegal substances I sure as hell would be testing you!
She was something else for sure! When I arrived, she was publically ripping the rest of the grooms all apart in the barn! Stuff that I should have just turned around right then and there but I was naive and stayed to suffer another couple weeks. It was my big moment right?
The entire time i witnessed stuff, I was either asked not to say anything or realising that even if I did, no one would believe me. The vibe was something you couldn’t explain. Horses didn’t like him at all.
Captain crappie LOUDLY heckled riders on course during a class he wasn’t part of in the international ring. We (the grooms) sat under the meadowcourt building. I remember thinking that I recognised that voice and looked to my coworkers who were are visibly uncomfortable. Immediately put it together and then looked at all the young girls around me knowing that they all knew his voice from his rainbow and butterfly interviews. The stuff he was yelling was beyond inappropriate and no one could stop him. Was he tanked? Maybe. But seriously wtf?
The offspring were products of the two of them so you can bet there are stories there too. They like to party…
Oh and when I left they still hadn’t paid me and weren’t really giving a feeling they were going to. Everyone else had gotten spending money to you know, eat. I got nothing. Eating out 3 times a day isn’t cheap. Especially after spending money on the plane ticket and thinking you were moving across the country. I was chastised for not tipping well. I didn’t drink and kinda wanted to eat the next day, sorry i didn’t tip the huge amounts. Good times.
Not trying to make an excuse, but I do live with a Quebecois Francophone, and it has been a favourite pasttime to do talk-to-text with our accents to see what it writes. I see many similarities in that post. There are sounds that are not in French - th, h, etc - it confuses the apps
Our test for my husband on the ‘th’ was to try to say “Thought” on the talk to text. 100% of the time it writes “F%#k”. Why? who knows.
The style, the running on, and the content? Not a language thing. The random words and misspellings fit a Franco accent.
So @EADoug, when you play with the talk to text does it really make lots of letter clusters that are not even a word? Or does it always pick some word, no matter how far not what you wanted?
My experience is that it always picks a word, even if it makes no sense with the sentence.
I just skimmed through again, my guess is that his phone is set to several languages - I have mine set to autocorrect french and english and it will let me write a mixed sentence (ie - my husband and I speak Franglais). Some of the letter strings are french words - ‘ans’ is years. There are a few random thigns, maybe he was typing too? Maybe his phone is set to more than 2 languages? As someone that reads Franglais on the daily, there were only a few jarring things in there.
Context and flow? That’s not anything to do with language and I’m not defending that at all.
The whole bit about the drug testing in that rant reminded me so much of things Lance Armstrong used to go off about. But, yeah, you can’t hide your whereabouts from WADA even if it is because you are taking a medication…that you don’t have an exemption for. And the testers can come for you anywhere when you are an athlete at that level. You’d think he’d have learned that over the past few decades.
Of course he knows this… he just clearly seems to feel that rules don’t apply to him. I’d imagine the fact that he has popped positive three separate times, but successfully managed to get related suspensions reduced/overturned is part of the problem.
Plus it’s not as if they have not caught other riders. Even other Canadian riders. One of them got the Canadians eliminated from the Olympics one or two cycles ago when she had a positive test at one of their qualifying competitions, which meant those results did not count.
ok, not ONLY the result of that, but it’s a big part. I read through his other facebook posts (that one wasn’t there, so it must be deleted) and they’re the same - very obviously French Canadian.
And as someone else pointed out, maybe little formal education? who knows.
