Let’s file this under the “We’ve never heard of that” category. Seriously, this is our first time to hear that three equestrian gold medalists in Athens 2004 were stripped of their medals because their horses didn’t pass doping tests.
So we’re like, “What? They test horses for drugs too?” Apparently they do. Here’s an excerpt from an AP report:
The international equestrian federation (Fédération Equestre Internationale, FEI) is stepping up the fight against medication use in equine athletes to avoid a repeat of the situation following the 2004 Athens Olympics.“Athens was really a bad moment for the sport,” FEI spokeswoman Malina Gueorguiev told The Associated Press on Friday. “It was a big problem and it was very spectacular. Should anything like that happen again it could be very detrimental for the sport.”
In case you are wondering, these are the athletes/teams who lost their medals:
At the last Olympics, Cian O’Connor of Ireland was stripped of his show jumping gold in a case that saw a sample lost or stolen from a laboratory in England.
Germany lost the team show jumping gold medal after Ludger Beerbaum’s horse returned a positive test. His appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport in Lausanne, Switzerland, failed.
In the most notorious Athens case, Bettina Hoy of Germany lost her three-day eventing gold for breaking the rules by crossing the start line twice in show jumping. Hoy’s horse also tested positive for an antihistamine in a case further complicated by claims it was administered by a vet mistakenly thought to have been authorized by the governing body.
We know that the authorities had to do what they did but we still can’t help feeling bad for the horses. Unlike Marion Jones, they didn’t knowingly take drugs to improve their performance, right? But then it would be unfair to the other horses, if it did improve their performance.
Anyways, to prevent similar “give us back the medal because your horse is drugged” scenarios in the future, the FEI came up with an anti-doping strategy of more tests and ensuring better communication with riders and veterinarians. It also introduced a strict liability rule making riders responsible for any positive test by their horse. Read the rest of the news report here.
