OPINION:Equestrianism loses again, thanks to our inability to learn from the 2004 games fiasco, writes Eileen Battersby
READ THE label. Now more than ever we are reading labels on foods, including candy bars and fruit drinks. As for medicines, we have all become amateur pharmacists; my schoolgirl chemistry has served me well.
Sport has long been at the mercy of the drug cheats and it is one of the cruellest of ironies that many cheats have slipped through without detection. That explains why drug-testing has become so exact.
There have, of course, been others along the way who quite innocently fell foul of the rules. Remember Rick De Mont? No? Very few do. But in 1972 at the Munich Olympics, de Mont, then aged 16, won the 1,500 metres freestyle in a world record time.
After the cheers and waves of triumph came disaster - ephedrine, a banned substance, was detected in his blood sample.
De Mont was an asthmatic and the drug was in his medication. He was stripped of his medal and his record and now no one remembers his name.
Dope-testing is now a sophisticated science capable of assessing the minutest traces of elements within the body. Yet still competitors think they can defy science - they can't.
Not surprisingly, it is difficult to comprehend why an international rider, any international rider, would not pay forensic attention to any product being put into or on a horse. Even the manufacturers of horse feeds are now careful to list on the bag the ingredients contained in the feed. And we have already had the contaminated food stories.
At whatever level, you take no chances. About three years ago, I overheard a conversation in Holmstead Saddlery in Co Kildare. A man asked the sales assistant for a popular and proven joint supplement. The assistant immediately asked him if he was intending to compete the horse.
The man was taken aback and said it was for his hunter who seemed "a bit stiff" and he'd heard "the stuff was good". The woman said: "All right, but just so that you know, one of the ingredients, MSM, is now on the FEI banned substance list, but if you're not competing, it doesn't matter."
That is how careful you must be. A shop assistant, not a vet, not a chemist, was advising a horse owner. Equine dope-testing is becoming increasingly sophisticated. Equi-Block, which Irish rider Denis Lynch said he used on his horse Lantinus at the Olympics in Hong Kong this week, is not stocked in Ireland. It is a US product available by mail order. The fact that it lists capsaicin - a drug known to be on the Olympic, as well as FEI, list of banned substances - as a main ingredient, and also that it says "will not test positive", should be sufficient to send any competitor in this age of zero tolerance running a mile from it.
It also describes itself as a "daily treatment for chronic everyday pain". One might wonder should any animal requiring daily treatment for chronic back pain be competing? Could any horse suffering pain be willing, or able, to jump a 1.6-metre Olympic fence?
No vet could responsibly recommend Equi-Block for use on a competition horse, although it could give relief to an injured, retired or elderly horse. A competition horse is very different from an ill or injured animal for which a wide range of legitimate medication is available - and acceptable.
Drug-testing is random and horses will react differently to medication. Levels of detection, depending on the amounts of medication used, may vary.
Lynch and the other three riders banned this week are lamenting a lost chance of a potential medal.
Cian O'Connor won the gold medal and then lost it over a human sedative, unlicensed for equine use, administered to Waterford Crystal when the horse was injured and out of competition.
It was a tough lesson. The medication was expected to have left the horse's system before he resumed competing. It hadn't.
The four horses disqualified this week were tested during the Olympic competition. One might wonder at the carelessness and the breathtaking failure to learn from O'Connor's experience.
The real loser is showjumping - a great sport now best guaranteed headline space for laboratory findings.
Eileen Battersby is an Irish Times journalist, horse owner, breeder and rider.