FEI Tribunal Exposing Truth and Lies in Endurance

Horse-canada.com - Full Article

Cuckson Report | July 6, 2015

The 27-month FEI suspension on a virtually unknown Qatari endurance rider Nasser Khalifa NJ Al Thani received a lot of media coverage recently.

There is nothing new, of course, about an endurance rider from Group 7 (Middle East) being banned for doping, but the reason it is now News with a capital N is simple: the FEI has a new policy of issuing press releases about Tribunal decisions. To date, they have only issued statements about cases with an Olympic or World Equestrian Games connection – with the obvious exception of the Jock Paget case, the subject of media frenzy.

This welcome initiative means those interested no longer have to consult the Tribunal database every other day, waiting for something new to pop up. In future, every media outlet will receive a ready-to-use story. If this spurs more colleagues to then read the much juicier, full decision notice I am all for it. The detailed evidence therein provides a snap-shot of the some very strange goings-on.

I am only sad this publicity drive didn’t happen much, much sooner, and that large numbers of people were not reading and thus reacting to these serial endurance horror stories decades ago...

Read more here:
http://www.horse-canada.com/cuckson-report/fei-tribunal-exposing-truth-and-lies-in-endurance/