[QUOTE=jhg140;8352517]
Seriously?
Have you watched any of the top junior riders do the jumpers? Many of them are jumping 1.50 Grand Prix tracks successfully. Several, including Tori, haven’t had a rail all week in Prix des States, over courses that produced some definite carnage from riders who aren’t used to maxed out tracks.[/QUOTE]
I’m with you, it probably won’t happen to a top junior rider. But this scenario… lesser kid who gets really hurt and whose family sues that pants off anyone wearing them connected to a horse they discover was drugged at the time… that is going to happen some day.
And the defensed used in/around the Colvin case: “Yeah, ok, we drugged it… but I didn’t personally do it” or “Yeah, but everyone is drugging to an extent. We just got caught,”-- those arguments won’t work. That’s because in the Colvin case, and as things stand, the results of having been found cheating have caused minimal damage. Apparently, no one cares a lot if sport is unclean. No one died, after all.
But when there are damaging results-- a hurt child and (wealthy, able, litigious) parents who got this rude awakening to how their pro, the sport and the USEF generally conspired such that a kid was sent into a competition to run and jump on a drugged animal-- things are going to be different. No one is going to tolerate the laissez-faire reaction that has happened (everywhere but on these threads) in the Colvin case so far.
ETA: And another thing!
Were I the attorney for the family with the maimed, kid (and my clients had deep pockets as well as a sense of moral outrage), I’d add in the USEF as one of the parties I’d want to pay.
You see, after kiddo gets hurt because of “every day drugging gone terribly bad,” and trainers saying “look, everyone does it. Usually it works. You just got unlucky,” I’d want to know why things like the Humble incident happened. (And you know what I mean, this was a pony that a kid would ride for fun who died of an OD. It wasn’t an adult with full knowledge going to the Olympics for high stakes fame and fortune.)
I’d want to know what the governing body of the sport knew about the drugging that the trainers trying to displace blame said was run-of-the-mill. Did the USEF know that the animals of amateurs and children were cruising around drugged up? I think you could find evidence that the USEF is well-aware of the problem. And if the USEF knew, then where was the effort to put a stop to that before some kid had to get catastrophically hurt or killed? If you looked at the history of rule-making surrounding D&M infractions that go way, way back, I think you’ll find a great deal of foot dragging.
Yes, there will be the USEF’s well-credentialled vet explaining to the jury that creating tests for new concoctions is just an expensively, tiring game of “catch-up” and that, for this reason, some drugging has and always will slip through the cracks. It will sound convincing, rational and contrite.
But if that attorney looked at the history of other parts of the drugging containment system–
How is testing done? What is USEF Membership paying into that and what are they getting out? What does Membership want in terms of clean sport? What are the penalties for infractions? Why did it take all the way to 2014 or so and the Humble thing to insist that folks suspected of drugging not destroy evidence? How are rules, penalties, procedures for the hearing process created? Who, historically, has had the most power in creating those? Whom do they benefit? Who decides which tests to develop when? If the FEI provides another tighter, arguably more effective model, how does the USEF explain it’s not following that? Isn’t it reasonable for a dues-paying USEF Member to expect that his sport’s governing body invest itself a bit in making sure that the sport is safe, not just clean and not just fair to the horses? After all there is no credentialing system for horse trainers in the US, so his results in the USEF show ring and staying in good standing with that organization becomes one of the few measures of quality available to the consumer. In which case, doesn’t the USEF gain the task of helping parents pick a safe sport for their kid? Surely, it’s not the case that anyone openly says to parents "Showing horses is the wild west, no one will do anything to make sure that your kid is safe, not even the governing body. Caveat emptor.
— if the suing attorney looked into the USEF’s role in preventing the kind of drugging horses to be more lethargic and less reactive while running and jumping (and obvious recipe for someday getting a horse to hurt its rider), I think he’d find plenty of culpability.
JMO.
