I’d like to be a fly on the wall on Friday (August 7), when Rio organisers brief delegates at the Olympic test event about the “glanders” scare that they have managed to keep under wraps for months.
I must underline that the OIE (World Organisation for Animal Health) and the FEI are confident in Rio’s bio-security arrangements, and that horses competing next year are not at risk . There is absolutely no suggestion, at the time of writing, that the Olympic competitions may need to be moved.
Nonetheless, I find the 11th hour announcement about glanders in a couple of army horses that were stabled at the Deodoro Olympic horse park up until six months ago a bit peculiar, even allowing cynicism coming with my job.
We now know that the first positive test emerged in April and there was one further confirmation and another “inconclusive” result by June. Hundreds of locally-based horses had meanwhile been screened for glanders by the Brazilian agricultural agency – and still are being screened, though unhelpfully the results of the next 584 won’t be available till the autumn.
Yet the FEI wasn’t even told till July 3 and to date, OIE has only been “informally” notified. Worse still, the Rio organisers did not tell national federations that anything was amiss till last Friday, July 31. It must have been discombobulating to have a “by the way, there’s a deadly disease out here” email plop into your in-box just as you were packing for your flight. Actually, I exaggerate. The briefing note only started detailing the glanders ramifications as the second item, half way down the page.
The Kiwis were the first to react, telling their national media they were shocked and would demand answers about the lack of communication, though that was before the FEI issued a calming statement. Even the OIE head Dr Bernard Vallet, while assisting Rio and endorsing the measures taken, has criticised the Brazilian government for its lack of “transparency.”
I contacted a few senior executives at other national federations over the weekend and they were simply not in a position to opine. Like everyone else, they were still getting their heads round whether the glanders announcement could be Really Serious or Not.
It is astonishing that nothing about the emergency testing programme has leaked out on social media before now. And although there is now much candour about what has occurred, no-one seems to have clarified yet what it was that prompted someone to test the first horse in April in the first place, given that it allegedly showed no clinical signs.
A lot has been written elsewhere about the gruesomeness of glanders. The short version is that there is no vaccine, it is incurable, and sufferers are usually euthanised to contain its spread – if they haven’t already succumbed to septicaemia, that is. It causes weepy nodules and ulcers in the respiratory tract, sometimes externally, and was used in biological warfare during World War One as it can strike a variety of other species, including dogs. Glanders has largely been wiped out apart from parts of Africa and Asia, but reappeared in Brazil 15 years ago.
Rio organisers are already under the cosh about sewage in the water at the sailing and rowing venues. I guess those competitors are only at significant risk if they fall in or accidently swallow splashes when inhaling large breaths at the height of their athletic effort.
Glanders, alas, is a bacterial infection that can lie dormant for yonks and spreads easily through contaminated feed, water, skin lesions, by coughing and sneezing, aerosol emissions or via tack and saddlery – just about every daily activity you expose a horse to.
On second thoughts, tack-sharing is not a feature of contemporary elite sport. Though I vividly recall going to a European eventing championship 30-odd years ago, at which a team that had travelled for days in a convoy of rackety old trailers from the remotest part of the then Soviet Bloc could only train (and indeed, commence their rounds) one at a time. They had just one hat and one jumping saddle between them!
