The positive drug tests from the Olympics (p. 120) and the death of Royal Kaliber (p. 122) are a distressing demonstration of where ideals clash with the reality of our horse sports, especially international horse sports sanctioned by the Federation Equestre Internationale.

In an ideal world, all horses would jump, piaffe, gallop or spin without medication. But in the real world, as responsible horsemen we use a wide array of physical therapies, traditional drug therapies, homeopathic and herbal supplements, and nutraceuticals to help keep our horses sound and comfortable. And in the ideal world of competition, the footing would always be perfect, minimizing the chance of horses injuring one of their precious legs. But in the real world, the Athens stadium wasn’t built until 2003, so the grass never had time to put down roots and stabilize the sand/dirt base. The result, as one footing expert said to me later, was “like growing grass in a child’s sandbox.” And, since it didn’t hold up, three horses–including Royal Kaliber–left the course in an ambulance.

Royal Kaliber’s needless loss puts an infuriating exclamation mark on the question I asked in this column a month ago: Whether the Olympics are worth the cost, to our horses and our sports?

That question, though, isn’t nearly as controversial as drug testing. I’ve long believed that the FEI’s no-foreign-substance drug rule was unrealistic, that it only encouraged people to try unproven substances that “won’t test” because they can’t use proven anti-inflammatory medications close to competition. I remember Dr. Marty Simensen, the chairman of the AHSA Drugs and Medications Committee in the ’80s and early ’90s, telling me after they passed the quantitative limits on Butazolidin and Banamine 15 years ago, “As a practitioner, I’m going to guard zealously my right to therapeutically treat the performing horse. I will fight tooth and nail those who might be of zero-tolerance mind because I don’t want my hands tied when I feel I can aid the horse.”

Since Marty has passed away, for a knowledgeable perspective on this situation, I called Dr. Kent Allen, the current chairman of the same USEF committee. The problem, Kent believed, was that the riders and their veterinarians misjudged the drugs’ withdrawal times. Surprisingly, he told me that the U.S. Equestrian Federation is the only national federation with its own drug-testing lab. And because our lab tests more samples per year than any other equine lab in the world (about 9,000 per year vs. the FEI’s 1,400 per year), no one else knows as much about equine drug metabolism as we do.

I asked Kent if these cases weren’t caused by drug testing being too fine, of being able to find minute traces of medications that are no longer affecting a horse’s performance. “The illusion that [the USEF or FEI] labs are all-powerful and all-invasive and will catch the use of a therapeutic drug isn’t real,” he replied with a laugh.

Finally, I asked him why the FEI couldn’t have a rule that incorporates the threshold levels for therapeutic drugs that the USEF uses. He said the FEI does have threshold levels for certain naturally occurring substances (like testosterone and caffeine), but that they’ll never be able to allow Butazolidin or Banamine because some national governments completely forbid their use. From the FEI viewpoint, if they can find a drug, it’s affecting the performance.

Certainly, cheaters should be caught. But the FEI’s rule means that the rest of us will struggle to treat our horses as athletes. Since there’s almost no chance the FEI will ever adopt the USEF’s workable therapeutic threshold levels, we’ll always be forced to compete in the FEI’s “ideal” world.