Doping in equestrian sport: A positive test result means disqualification, writes Grania Willis, Equestrian Correspondent
The news that Cian O'Connor's Olympic gold medal horse Waterford Crystal has tested positive to a prohibited substance has sent shock-waves through not just the equestrian world, but the entire sporting community that cheered on the Irish combination to gold in Athens in August.
The horse-racing world is well used to winners being disqualified following positive dope tests. Although it is not unusual for such test results to have been caused by contaminated feedstuffs, there is no redress against a positive test.
If a prohibited substance is found in the horse's sample, the race is lost.
The same applies in the equestrian world outside racing. Regardless of the circumstances, a positive test results in automatic disqualification.
O'Connor's legal team will be working overtime to provide a watertight case for their client before he is called before the International Equestrian Federation's judicial committee this month.
But if Waterford Crystal's B sample tests positive to the same substance that was found in the A sample, the best legal arguments in the world will not save Ireland's only medal of the Athens Olympics.
It may take the best part of two months, even with the promise to "fast-track" the procedure, but it now seems virtually certain that O'Connor's gold will be turned to ashes before the year is out.
But a positive dope test is not always as damning as it might seem. Four of the 40 horses from which samples were taken in Athens tested positive to a prohibited substance, and the Germans, already stripped of their eventing team gold due to a rider error, now look set to lose their showjumping team title as well on the most minor of infringements.
Ludger Beerbaum's Goldfever was one of the four horses whose A sample has tested positive to a banned substance, but, in this instance, the prohibited substance was an ointment used to treat a cut that was reluctant to heal in the heat and humidity of the Athens summer.
The Germans, apparent winners of the eventing team gold in the first week of the Games, lost those medals in a special sitting of the Court of Arbitration for Sport in August when it was shown that Bettina Hoy had crossed the start line twice in the showjumping phase. Now the positive test on Beerbaum's Goldfever means that Germany will be stripped of team gold in the pure showjumping as well.
Ironically, Germany could have lost both those team titles in the laboratory. Bettina Hoy's Irish-bred Ringwood Cockatoo has also tested positive to a banned substance, hydroxy-diphenhydramin, a benadryl lotion used to treat allergies.
Hoy's showjumping error robbed Germany of team gold in the eventing, but news of Ringwood Cockatoo's positive dope test means that the Germans would have lost the medal anyway, along with the showjumping title which is almost certain to go following yesterday's news of Goldfever's positive test.
To lose an Olympic crown after applying an ointment to assist healing of a cut seems particularly harsh. But the Germans are likely to see both their world driving champion and the winner of the individual gold at the vaulting world championships stripped of their medals too.
One of the horses competed by Michael Freund, winner of this year's world driving title, has tested positive to valerian, a herbal calming remedy, while Picasso, the horse on which Kai Vorberg won world vaulting gold, tested positive to betamethasone, the same substance that was found in the sample taken from Ludger Beerbaum's Goldfever in Athens.