FEI President 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 Olympic equestrian events at Greenwich Park were negative.

Clean sport

While both the 2004 and 2008 Olympics were marred by positive tests, London 2012 has been heralded as a great success for clean sport.

“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,” Princess Haya said.

“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.

“We had a rigorous and comprehensive testing programme in place. These were the most tested Games ever and we also tested for more substances than ever before. We worked hand in hand with the Horseracing Forensic Laboratory in Newmarket and thank them for the speed with which they processed all the Olympic samples so that we could maintain a level playing field throughout the Games.

“The equestrian community shouldn’t be thinking of this as a triumph; having a clean sport should be our normal day to day business, but now that we’ve had three major championships that were the most heavily tested ever and they were 100% clean, we can hold our heads up high and say that yes, this is a victory. We haven’t reached this point by resting on our laurels, there’s always work to be done and I am incredibly proud of the FEI’s performance over the four years since Hong Kong."