PrintNo one could have predicted that the Fédération Equestre Internationale delegates would vote to legalize threshold levels of drugs like phenylbutazone at the General Assembly in Copenhagen, Denmark, on Nov. 19.
The FEI has been struggling to deal with doping in equestrian sport for years. Medals had to be stripped and reassigned after show jumping drug scandals at the last two Olympic Games, and equestrian superstars like Germany’s Isabell Werth and Great Britain’s Michael Whitaker were set down for doping incidents this summer.
It should have been a landmark day to pass historic clean sport reform at the General Assembly. This summer, Great Britain’s Lord Stevens headed up a commission with the mission of investigating doping in equestrian sport and proposing changes for the better. His commission ended up partnering with the Ljungqvist Commission for Clean Sport, headed up by Arne Ljungqvist, chairman of the IOC Medical Commission and vice president of the World Anti-Doping Agency.
Two hours were set aside for presentations on the topic. Delegates heard powerful speeches from the leaders of the joint commissions on wide ranging reforms for medication control and the “professionalization” of the sport. Lord Stevens pulled no punches. Equestrian was “as good as dead” if it was not clean.
So the room was nothing short of stupefied when FEI veterinary director Graham Cooke dropped into his presentation a brief item that delegates would be voting for the controlled use of phenylbutazone—banned outright 20 years ago—and two non-steroidal anti-inflammatories.
Significant global players—the United States, Germany, Ireland, Britain, Australia, New Zealand and Sweden—made impassioned pleas for zero tolerance. But when the secret ballots were cast, “bute” was back in international competition by a margin of 53 votes to 48.
Even FEI vice-president Sven Holmberg was moved to tell the floor, “What you have just done has cut the legs off the clean sport campaign. If you thought recent media reaction against rollkur has been tough, just wait to see what happens with this.”
A request in the afternoon for a re-vote from the German president Breido Graf zu Rantzau—backed by Ireland and Britain—was rejected on the grounds that some delegates had gone home, and that there had been no ambiguity about the motion.
The controversy lay in the separate choice between continuing with an Oct. 20-dated list of prohibited substances (also referred to, confusingly, as the “current list,”) and adopting a “progressive list.” The latter does not prohibit phenylbutazone (up to 8 mcg/ml in plasma or serum), salicylic acid (up to 750mcg/ml in urine and up to 6.5 mcg/ml in plasma or serum) and flunixin (up to 500 mcg/ml in plasma or serum) so long as those substances are not detected in a horse's sample above the prescribed limits noted and are used in isolation and not combined.
The progressive list also sanctions acetycysteine, dichloroacetate (lactanase) and isoxuprine.
Where Did This Come From?
The FEI seemed as baffled by the furor as delegates were by the FEI’s matter-of-fact delivery of the bute option, and its apparent failure to have rehearsed any sort of rationale or justification for the inevitable barrage of questions.
