Drug testing is integral to sport, integral to Olympic Games. For a top athlete it is part of life, part of competition. For the good guys that is as far as it goes. Probably at best it's just a bore. There is one sport where the process is doubled.
The observers may be medically qualified and mindfully dispassionate, but public micturition is hardly the most discrete procedure to be endured. When the medallists leave the arena at the Markopulou venue, there the authorities have made every effort to make the process as easy as possible. You can have a choice of straw or wood-shavings in your sample collection stall. The human athlete partnered with another living, breathing athlete of a different species, the horse.
At Olympic level, the three separate equestrian competitions are Eventing, Dressage and Jumping. A total of 205 horses have arrived at the state-of the-art Markopoulou Equestrian Center from 38 countries of the globe.
Protecting against drug abuse in equestrian sport is naturally protection against unfair advantage, the preservation of the integrity of the sport. But theres the other side, the protection and welfare of the horse.
While the human athlete has the choice in his own hands, the four-legged athlete is under the human's control. The International Equestrian Federation, governing body of all three disciplines, wants each competition to be won fair and square, and to be seen to have been.
Positive dope tests do occur in equestrian sport. It is perceived as a clean sport and deserves to be, but there are exceptions. Fortunately, the statistics show that offenders are unlikely to get caught out again, and that most cases do not involve intentional efforts to deceive, merely that
the horse has been medicated too close to a competition. Undoubtedly the market is always one step ahead of the tests, it always works like that, but with animals there are other facets to the story.
Frits Sluyter, head of the International Equestrian Federation's veterinary department, explains that the issue of the use of drugs - let alone the misuse - is a dilemma. There is far less data and information available for veterinary pharmaceuticals than for the human market. And
while products used on livestock for human consumption are routinely tested to provide information on, say, the length of time the medicine remains in the animal's body, provision of that sort of information is not routinely available for the much smaller equine medicine market.
Approximately fifty horses will be tested throughout the equestrian competitions. The medal winners - both horses and riders - are tested as a matter of course. The remainder are selected at random. It's no more than "pick a number out of a hat" unless a veterinarian, judge, or official feel a particular case could warrant investigation.
The Laboratoire de Courses Hippiques in Paris, France is the centre used by the FEI for medication control tests. Beyond that there are associated laboratories and reference laboratories that contribute to the increasing library of data necessary to ensure the fairest controls.
"The laboratories are upgrading analytical procedures all the time" said Sluyter. "Tests are evolving to identify more sophisticated substances, and further identification of detectable substances is being fine tuned all the time. The bottom line is that we are interested in any substance that is still having an effect at the time when the horse is competing. It is a compromise, and one which is not always that easy."
For the horses, one minefield that has arisen in recent years is the popularity of herbal feed additives. Valerian, for example, an herb with tranquillising properties, is now on the banned list and is being detected. The FEI does not test, nor does it recommend specific products. But again, the manufacturers' information is a risky benchmark. Herbal feed additives are popular, but can be unstable in their composition.
For humans, each sport has its own list of prohibited substances: Medications that would not affect the performance of an equestrian rider, for example, could well improve a shooter's sharpness. But if a human athlete is using a permitted prescription medicine, the advance declaration TUE (Therapeutic Use Exemption) Standard Application Form, is the route to declaring why and how much medication is needed. Declare is the watchword for riders. If a horse needs to be medicated - for example with so many horses coming in by air, tranquillising a fretful horse is a safety issue - this must also be declared immediately upon arrival to the FEI veterinary commission.
There is no accelerated procedure for the Athens Olympics. Both blood and urine tests are taken - the combination being the best way of ensuring accuracy. We wont hear during the Games if a positive test occurs. But the riders themselves as the 'persons responsible' can take steps to ensure their horses and therefore they themselves do not suffer the ignominy of a
positive test. Gold, silver, bronze - all far too valuable to throw away. The value of the partnership, trust and talent of your horse? Incalculable.
Campus
