Retired Canadian show jumper Eric Lamaze has been suspended until 2031 after the international Court of Arbitration for Sport ruled against him in a human anti-doping case initiated by the Fédération Equestre International in 2022. The case stems from Lamaze’s refusal to submit to a human drug test at a 2021 show jumping competition in the Netherlands. 

The FEI formally notified Lamaze in March 2022 that it was taking disciplinary action over his refusal to submit a sample, in violation of the FEI’s human anti-doping rules, at the Longines Global Champions Tour Valkenswaard CSI5* (the Netherlands). 

That case was elevated to CAS to be settled, and during the course of those proceedings, Lamaze through his attorney submitted documents purportedly relating to his treatment for brain cancer, which the rider has said he was diagnosed with in 2017. After those documents were determined to be forgeries in a Canadian court, where they also were submitted to excuse him from testifying in a protracted horse sales lawsuit, the FEI suspended Lamaze for four years for tampering with evidence in the anti-doping case. That suspension began Sept. 12, 2023—several days after the judge in the Canadian case ruled the documents were fraudulent.

“In its decision, the CAS Panel found Mr. Lamaze guilty of the anti-doping rule violation and imposed an ineligibility period of four years, starting once the ineligibility period already imposed by the FEI has ended,” the FEI said in a statement announcing the CAS decision.

The additional four-year suspension imposed by CAS will run from Sept. 12, 2027, to Sept. 11, 2031. Lamaze was also fined approximately $16,400 (15,000 CHF) and ordered to pay the cost of the arbitration proceedings as well as approximately $13,100 (12,000 CHF) to the FEI as a contribution to its legal fees. All Lamaze’s competitive results earned between June 5, 2021, when he refused to submit to drug testing, and March 30, 2022, were also disqualified. 

Lamaze last rode in an FEI competition in September 2021, and on March 31, 2022, announced he was retiring from competition due to his health concerns. He was named technical advisor for the Canadian show jumping team in February 2022 and coached the team at the 2022 Agria FEI Jumping World Championships (Denmark) but did not renew that contract when it expired in early 2023. He since has faced a multitude of lawsuits brought against him by creditors, including his former attorneys, and former clients for whom he bought and trained horses. Those clients, including the former owners of Nikka VD Bisschop (who went on to represent Canada with rider Erynn Ballard at the Paris Olympic Games), claim he lied about horses’ purchase and sales prices, and paid himself vast hidden commissions, to pocket millions of dollars across various sales. 

In October, the Canadian website Horse Sport, which first broke the story about Lamaze submitting the forged medical documents in a lawsuit brought by another former client, the Aziz family’s Iron Horse Farm, published a press release titled “Eric Lamaze Breaks His Silence: The disgraced Olympic gold medalist fires back at the accusations and rumors and seeks to set the record straight about recent lawsuits,” in which Lamaze asserted his innocence. Within a month, Horse Sport had deleted the press release from its site and printed a lengthy retraction titled “Aziz Family Refutes Lamaze’s Press Release,” which said the Lamaze release was “replete with false defamatory statements,” which it corrected line by line. The website’s retraction concluded with an apology to members of the Aziz family and a statement saying the website “did not attempt to verify the truthfulness and accuracy of Mr. Lamaze’s claims prior to our publication” of the release.