PC: Lorraine Jackson
The FEI has just announced that through the Court of Arbitration for Sport, show jumper Paige Johnson’s one-year ban has been overturned and Paige may resume competition immediately. The original ban was for mistakenly using Neosporin with Pain Relief instead of regular Neosporin on her horse, Luke Skywalker in January of this year.
Paige appealed to the CAS after the ban, and the arbitrators found that even the FEI’s classification has changed since the ruling – moving Pramoxime from the Banned list to a Controlled Medication starting January 2018. To hold her to the previous conditions for using a banned substance were absurd, and the CAS found a more reasonable period of eligibility would be three months rather than one year.
Because Paige has already been out of the saddle since the first week of April, she is already eligible to begin competing again.
FEI Legal Director Mikael Rentsch explains “Given the fact that Pramoxine has been recently reclassified as a controlled medication, effective as of 1 January 2018, the FEI agreed as a matter of fairness and based on the principle of proportionality, that the period of ineligibility initially imposed by the FEI Tribunal should be reduced. Three months was deemed appropriate given the circumstances.”
The court costs for arbitration will be split between Paige’s team and the FEI.
Further details on the CAS decision can be found here.
The FEI’s press releases on the new ruling are available here, and the initial FEI Tribunal case can be found here.