February 17, 2011
By Staff Reporter
O’Connor’s hearing before the judicial committee of the International Equestrian Federation (FEI) was due to take place this month. However, the rider has requested an oral hearing into the charge that his horse was doped before his gold-medal-winning performance last August.
The committee will study O’Connor’s written explanation of why the banned drugs fluphenazine and zuclopenthixol were found in the horse’s system, and then hear his oral presentation most likely in Zurich, Switzerland, in January.
O’Connor has insisted that the apparently low dosage of the two drugs found in the horse’s sample is proof that the drugs were administered well in advance of the Olympics and that they only showed up in the analysis because of overly sensitive testing procedures.
When the B sample of the horse’s urine was mysteriously stolen en route to a laboratory in England, a sample of the horse’s blood was used to confirm the initial finding of the banned drugs. Whether a blood sample can confirm the results of a urine test may preoccupy the Court of Arbitration for Sport, which will almost surely be O’Connor’s next port of call if the FEI decides to suspend him and to strip him of his gold medal.
O’Connor, who has protested his innocence throughout, was cleared of any serious wrongdoing when his speed mare ABC Landliebe tested positive for two human sedatives — one of them fluphenazine — last May.