FEI celebrates clean Olympic Games
The President of the International Equestrian Federation (FEI) HRH Princess Haya has announced that London 2012 was a clean Games for equestrian sport, following confirmation that all human and equine samples taken during the events were negative.
Princess Haya said: “The FEI had a really steep mountain to climb after Athens and Hong Kong, but we had a clean Youth Olympic Games, a clean FEI World Equestrian Games and now we’ve crowned it with a clean Olympic Games in London. We knew that fair play and clean sport was the only way to produce top sport in the Olympic equestrian events and we are very proud that we have achieved that goal.
“The fact that all human and equine samples came back negative demonstrates the success of the FEI Clean Sport campaign, which has resulted in a major reduction in the number of positives in the Olympic disciplines over the past two and a half years."
This year, more testing was done than ever before and, while proud to see such good results, Princess Haya reminded the equestrian community that they "shouldn't be thinking of this as a triumph; having a clean sport should be our normal day to day business."
She concluded with crediting the 2012 Olympic Games as the best ever for equestrian sport.
With Strangles Awareness Week just around the corner (5-11 May), vets are being encouraged to share a survey about the disease with their horse-owning clients.
