Suspended by the FEI for banned substance positive result, in a horse he rode in Barcelona.
Wasn’t he suspended previously for a cocaine positive horse?
COCAINE?
What in the blue moon does that do to enhance your horse’s performance?
This article seems to suggest it has the opposite effect - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8125896
Is it accidental dosing?
The cocaine was a previous violation. One of Jane Clark’s horses. He didn’t ride for her after that episode. It is a different drug this time. I’ll look it up and come back with the substance.
As for “accidental dosing”, people often try to blame a positive cocaine test in a horse on “contamination” and they always put the blame on cocaine using grooms whom are apparently so well paid that they have enough left over cocaine on their hands to make a horse test positive. 
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O-desmethylvenlafaxine. It is an anti-depressant drug for human use. Apparently horses have tested positive in racing and FEI disciplines and it is listed as a banned substance by the FEI.
The cocaine incident was in the Olympic trials in 2011 or 2012. The last 8 paragraphs of this rather weirdly written article do get the point across, albeit in a circular fashion. https://www.equisearch.com/news/jane…ion-post-18888
This is regarding the current issue https://horse-canada.com/horse-news/mario-deslauriers-bardolina-2-suspended-fei/
Knowing how stringent the FEI rules on drugs and medications are, and how fine the tests are at picking up trace amounts of banned substances, I am surprised that people (especially those that have had problems with banned substances in their horses before) are so lax in their monitoring of drug usage by their employees.
Honestly, improve your management so that your grooms, who are either using illegal drugs or are taking prescribed drugs for a medical condition that are banned in competition horses, do not need to pee in an FEI horse’s stall.
It never seems to be the rider that is responsible for the accidental contamination of the horse resulting in the positive test. It’s always “the groom”.
It’s always the groom. Like it’s always the butler…
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I believe in the cocaine incident the barn manager was listed as “trainer” and was let go after that.
That’s not the way I remember the story.
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My apologies, when I posted I hadn’t had all my coffee yet, barn manager fined/suspended, not fired.
Yeah, because when I think of grooms, I definitely think of high-rollers… sigh.
Thanks for the education!
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Are people being sarcastic? I do not know the history of MD’s suspensions, but I don’t think drugs are found in trace amounts in bedding or feed, or transmitted to the horses this way. At least in hunters, cocaine is known to be given by some trainers at shows at night to keep the horse awake so it’s exhausted for show day. Then it gets to be the half-asleep, ammy-friendly, could-take-a-blind-monkey-on-its-back-hunter that makes us all wonder what happened to the hunter divisions.
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See, I had never heard of this use. Yikes.
Even if we are completing ignoring the horse’s safety and wellness, I wouldn’t want to ride a sleep-deprived/exhausted animal.
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I doubt this use of the drug would be done for a jumper? The drug testing is so sophisticated and remember there is a zero tolerance. There was an article I was reading the other day and unfortunately I can’t locate the link but it outlined how indeed traces of meth/coc can be left by a third party and horses can ingest it. I think it included an incident where some QH were found positive and they traced it back to the trailer they had used… I’ll see if I can find the article and post it. It was interesting whether you say “wow, who knew” or hogwash.
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For about 30 years I have heard this urban legend of using cocaine to make a horse quiet (since the first positive horse on record). Do you have any idea how much cocaine it would take to “keep a horse awake” long enough to make it tired the next day? Buckets. I have known many unscrupulous trainers that have used every thing under the sun, but have never once heard credible evidence that anyone did this. Old wives tale as far as I am concerned. These are the kind of conspiracy stories you hear from people who routinely end up 5th. Sorry but as someone with over 40 years in the hunter industry I simply don’t buy it. Horses can indeed be contaminated by small amounts of substance due to the minuscule amounts of a substance that are prosecuted under zero tolerance.
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There’s a blues song from the 1920s: “Cocaine’s for horses & it ain’t for men, doc says it’ll kill me but he don’t say when, hey, hey, honey, take a whiff on me.”
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Chunky Munky, I really hope you’re right!! I’ve read posts on here alleging that it’s done, and i think some people are just crazy enough to do it. But I’m relieved to know that it’s an urban legend.
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What many people just don’t understand, because they are not the type to drug their horses, is that some people will try anything if they think it may give them an advantage.
Cocaine may not give a horse an advantage in competition, but some people (especially if they themselves partake of the drug) obviously believe it will, or are just willing to give it a try.
With the minuscule number of riders tested for banned substances by both the FEI and USEF, there is no way of knowing who would test positive along with their horses.
“Environmental contamination” will always be blamed on the groom, until riders are tested. Such testing is under the purview of both USEF and the FEI ,however both seem uninterested in finding the source of the “contamination” by increasing the drug testing of riders.
Again, this is not rocket science. a) Don’t take Meth or Cocaine. (The meth case was from a horse trailer that was previously a meth lab).
b) Don’t hire people who use illegal substances.
If you are going to do either a) or b), for god’s sake don’t anyone pee in the horse’s stall, and do, everyone, wash your hands after snorting your huge amount of powdered illegal drugs, since the minute amounts from your hands or urine are enough to be detectable in your horse.
I can’t believe we are having this conversation again.
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I wonder if he can still declare himself as an athlete for this summer’s Pan-American Games
Interesting article about drug residue in the Charles Town race track ship in stalls.
https://nationalhbpa.com/an-in-depth…contamination/
I wonder if the stalls at show grounds are just as contaminated and if there is enough contamination to cause positives in the next resident of that show stall.
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