A breach of contract lawsuit against one of Canada’s most prominent Olympians finally ended last week with an Ontario judge ruling Eric Lamaze owed the plaintiffs more than $786,000.
The case lasted 15 years and Lamaze had argued he couldn’t take part because he had terminal cancer – but another judge in the same case ruled the evidence Lamaze submitted to prove he was receiving treatment wasn’t “credible or reliable.”
“I’ve carried the weight of this on my shoulders,” Karina Frederiks, the daughter of the plaintiffs, said while growing emotional, minutes after the Aug. 8 ruling.
Her family’s stable, Iron Horse Farm, sued Lamaze in 2010, initially claiming he sold them three horses for show jumping who couldn’t perform as promised before narrowing the case down to two horses in question.
Lamaze denied any wrongdoing in his defence statement.
An Ontario judge ruled in the stable’s favour, noting Lamaze failed to appear in final proceedings.
The lawsuit was one of many involving the Olympic equestrian gold medallist. Lamaze has been sued nearly 20 times in Canada and the U.S. since 2009 over claims ranging from fraud and breach of contract to hundreds of thousands of dollars in unpaid rent. Nine suits were successful, three were dismissed because court staff couldn’t find him and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) issued two liens against him.
Court records do not show whether he was ever charged with contempt.
Despite facing so many lawsuits – and despite testing positive for cocaine at several Olympics and having multiple judges issuing arrest warrants for Lamaze for contempt of court when he repeatedly failed to respond to court summons – Equestrian Canada named him in 2022 to a leadership role where he coached Canadian athletes on the world stage.
His appointment raises questions about the national sports organization’s scrutiny of their candidates.
Equestrian Canada said it “received multiple assurances from Mr. Lamaze and his legal counsel that he was fully eligible to be contracted and act in the role.”
Global News sent Lamaze a list of detailed questions about the allegations and rulings against him. He declined an interview. In his emailed response said he had no comment except to say: “your reporting on some of you law suits (sic) your (sic) mentioned are not accurate.” He did not explain any inaccuracies.
He previously told the Toronto Star he did have cancer and that he made a mistake by presenting a forged medical document.
A competitive show jumper, Lamaze began riding for the Canadian national team within one year of his 1992 world stage debut, according to his International Olympic Committee biography.
He represented Canada at the 1996 Summer Olympic Games but tested positive for cocaine and was banned for four years.
Lamaze’s Olympic biography states his personal circumstances, including growing up with a mother who dealt drugs, were “sufficient to have his ban lifted.”
He made Canada’s Olympic squad again in 2000 but tested positive for cocaine – twice, again dodging a lifetime ban.
Then, at the 2008 Games, Lamaze “made history by becoming the first equestrian athlete to win an individual Olympic gold medal for Canada…” according to his Equestrian Canada biography. He also won the team silver medal.
He became Canada’s “most decorated Olympian equestrian” at the 2016 Games when he won two bronze medals, according to his Canadian Olympic Committee biography.
At the height of his career he was “undoubtedly the highest profile and the most successful, the most renowned Canadian equestrian athlete, not just in Canada but across the world,” according to Akaash Muharaj, Equestrian Canada’s CEO from 2008 until 2012, when it was called Equine Canada.
Muharaj knew Lamaze professionally while he served as the executive of Canada’s horse sport governing body, he said.
Lamaze had a “ruthless determination” to always improve his riding and was “willing to attack jumps with complete abandon,” Muharaj said.
But Muharaj said Lamaze was also known for his humility, noting the rider came from a “highly impoverished background” and rose through talent and determination to the top of a sport known for being the reserve of the rich.
“The crowd would roar with support after (Lamaze competed), and Eric’s characteristic gesture was to drop his reins and to point both his fingers downwards at his horse,” Muharaj said.
“He was saying to the audience, ‘your praise and your adulation belongs not to me, but to my horse,’” Muharaj added.
Lamaze went on to win many other medals at different equestrian events, every grand prix event in the world and was ranked No. 1 in the world several times.
He, and his renowned stallion Hickstead, were inducted into Canada’s Sports Hall of Fame and awarded the Order of Sport, Canada’s highest sporting honour, in 2020.
His Equestrian Canada and Canadian Olympic biographies do not mention his positive drug tests or suspensions.
Karina Frederiks said she met Lamaze in 2002 or 2003, when she was 15 or 16 years old.
She read about Lamaze in equestrian magazines and thought buying a horse from him was “the road to success” because she dreamed of riding for Canada.
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Her family bought “overqualified” horses from Lamaze, she said, to boost her show jumping career.
It’s an extremely expensive pursuit. A competitive show jumping horse costs hundreds of thousands of dollars. She said she and her family were new to the sport and relied on Lamaze’s expert knowledge.
But the horses Lamaze sold her family “never really worked out” and Lamaze blamed her for the failure, she said.
Frederiks’ family stables, Iron Horse Farm, sued Lamaze in 2010 on the grounds that he sold them two horses who did not perform as he claimed they would.
Iron Horse alleged that Lamaze’s representation of the first horse “proved false as upon delivery” it could not jump as high as he said it could.
The lawsuit also alleged Lamaze sold them a second horse named Peppercorn “with a good European show record,” but that Peppercorn’s real name was “Romen,” that she “did not have a good European show record” and that the horse “was lame and entirely unsuitable for show jumping” because of “an undisclosed and serious surgery.”
“(Peppercorn) was so severely lame that she was never supposed to compete again” when Lamaze sold the horse, Frederiks alleged to Global News.
In his statement of defence, Lamaze denied the allegations, saying the horses were “all outstanding,” that “any problems with these horses was as a result of the care given by them to the plaintiff,” that it is “common in the industry for horse’s names to be changed” and “if false papers were used, it was without the knowledge of the defendants.”
On Aug. 8, Judge Erica Chozik ordered Lamaze to pay the Canadian equivalent of nearly US$573,000 “with no one appearing for the Defendants (Lamaze and his Florida stable corporation) noted in default, though properly served.”
The judge did not issue further assessments on the specific details of the claims in the short ruling, but noted the decision was made after considering all of the material submitted by the plaintiffs to the court.
Another prominent part of the case had involved claims by Lamaze that he had cancer – and a different judge ruling Lamaze’s evidence was not credible.
Frederiks’ lawsuit ground on for years, with Lamaze fighting to have it adjourned, and, Morse alleged, trying to delay it.
Lamaze’s then-lawyer Tim Danson wrote in early 2019 that Lamaze “has an aggressive brain tumour” and that Lamaze couldn’t attend court because he “is fighting for his life.”
“The aggressive chemotherapy ripped his body apart,” Danson wrote in February 2019, adding he “is currently critically compromised and debilitated cognitively and physically.”
Lamaze’s Canadian Olympic biography says he was diagnosed in 2017. A letter purportedly from a cancer clinic in Brussels that Lamaze’s lawyer submitted to court states Lamaze had glioblastoma.
It is the “great white” shark of brain tumours and a generation ago someone with it could have months or weeks to live, according to Johns Hopkins Medicine.
Morse said he became suspicious years earlier because, despite the illness the Olympian claimed, Lamaze was still alive.
“He was some sort of medical miracle to survive as long as he had in the circumstances,” Morse said.
Morse said he couldn’t recall what sparked the idea to search for Lamaze online “but it was as simple as going on the web.”
“And it turns out on the web, January 31st, Eric was competing.”
A video posted to Lamaze’ Florida stables’ Facebook on Jan. 31, 2019, appears to show him riding and is captioned “Eric Lamaze & Gut Einhaus’ Bonnie MZ making their (Winter Equestrian Festival) debut in the 1.40 m this afternoon!” mentioning the horse’s name.
Another Facebook photo appears to show him riding on Feb. 1, 2019. Records from the event show he finished 71st.
Danson wrote on Feb. 4, 2019, that it was his understanding that Lamaze had returned to Europe to be “treated with yet another round of heavy chemotherapy for his brain tumor.”
That’s when Frederiks’ family hired a private investigator. In a sworn statement submitted to court, Brad Johnson wrote he witnessed Lamaze compete on March 14, 2019, several times.
“(Lamaze) was in 1st place after his run,” Johnson wrote
Lamaze did attend examination in April 2019, according to court documents. Excerpts of the interview show Morse’s firm questioned him about selling the horses. The transcript records Lamaze saying he would help find a replacement for the first horse for the Frederiks.
Even after Lamaze’s appearance, Danson continued to tell the court that Lamaze could not testify, culminating in him submitting letters purportedly from doctors at a cancer hospital in Brussels, where Lamaze said he was receiving care.
The presiding Ontario Superior Court justice Marvin Kurz who was hearing that part of the case, noted inconsistencies in every letter.
In one, Kurz noted it spelled the doctor’s name differently than the hospital’s website. It was also written in Dutch, which the site doesn’t list the doctor as speaking.
Other letters had “illegible signatures” and different addresses for the same hospital, among other discrepancies, Kurz wrote.
The judge directed Morse to contact the doctor but Morse couldn’t because hospital staff said the doctor was on holiday – “despite the ostensibly scheduled surgery (on Lamaze) that week,” records show.
Morse’s firm then submitted a signed statement from another private investigator who met with the doctor who supposedly signed the first letter. According to the investigator’s sworn statement, the doctor said the signature wasn’t his.
Morse also submitted a letter from the hospital’s lawyer, who wrote that another doctor whose name was on one of Lamaze’s letters said the signature wasn’t his and the document was “a fake.”
“I never wrote this letter and moreover I have no memory of such a patient,” the lawyer’s message says, quoting the second doctor.
On Aug. 14, 2023, Kurz dismissed Lamaze’s motion for adjournment, writing “I cannot find any of the evidence that Mr. Lamaze relies upon… to be either credible or reliable.”
About two weeks later, Danson filed to remove himself as Lamaze’s lawyer.
Kurz ordered Lamaze to pay Iron Horse’s legal fees for the adjournment proceedings. Court documents show Lamaze did not pay and so his defence was struck.
Former Equestrian Canada CEO Akaash Muharaj said Lamaze’s announcement that he had cancer prompted an “outpouring of sympathy and grief” from the equestrian community and that the chef d’equipe role seemed an “apt way for him to end his career.”
But Kurz’s ruling, Muharaj said, brought “overwhelming shock.”
“There was a second wave of grief,” he told Global News, “of people grieving for the death of the idea of the man they thought they’d known.”
In an emailed statement, Danson said he had no choice but to recuse himself as Lamaze’s counsel in response to the “shocking information presented in open court.”
“I had unknowingly made representations to the court based on representations made to me by Mr. Lamaze, which I believed to be truthful, but apparently were not. This was completely unacceptable” Danson wrote.
“Mr. Lamaze refused to speak to me thereafter when I sought an explanation.”
Between 2009 and the end of 2021 Lamaze faced or was facing more than a dozen lawsuits and in October 2021 he was inducted into Canada’s Sports Hall of Fame.
Equestrian Canada named him chef d’equipe, where he would help select athletes for the national team, coach them and serve as spokesperson.
By then, the rulings, costs, interest and liens against Lamaze meant he owed more than $2 million.
Equestrian Canada’s Feb. 7, 2022 announcement quotes the organization’s CEO Meg Krueger saying “(Lamaze’s) knowledge and passion are truly remarkable and there is little doubt that he is the right choice to lead Canadian show jumping into a successful future.”
The job description stated the successful candidate for technical advisor, who would also act as chef d’equipe, must have “high levels of personal and professional integrity.”
The Equestrian Canada job posting for technical advisor, who could also serve as chef d’equipe, states the successful candidate must have high levels of personal and professional integrity.
In January 2023 Equestrian Canada announced it would not renew Lamaze’s one-year contract when it expired at the end of that month.
The press release said Lamaze has been battling brain cancer since 2017 and quoted another Equestrian Canada official saying “[w]ith his improved health, we look forward to seeing him back in the saddle and continuing his coaching.”
Global News sought an interview with Equestrian Canada about the decision to name Lamaze to the role despite the legal claims he had already faced and was still facing at the time.
The organization did not agree, but in a statement said it undertook “standard references and pre-engagement vetting process,” including holding interviews, taking letters of support and “additional research.”
“As part of a hiring or appointing process, Equestrian Canada does not research matters pertaining to an equestrian athlete or staff member’s personal life, non-sport related business dealings or horse sales,” the statement said.
“A criminal records check is part of our safe sport process and would have been conducted as part of the appointment.”
The Equestrian Canada statement said, “no one can deny that Mr. Lamaze achieved exceptional results in his riding career, holds an unwavering passion for equestrian sport and had a desire to see Canada continue to achieve excellence on the world stage.”
The statement noted Equestrian Canada had been informed Lamaze “had committed an anti-doping rule violation… due to the submission of fabricated medical documents during an ongoing (Court of Arbitration for Sport) Proceeding and was subject to a period of Ineligibility of four years.” He is not able to serve as coach or technical advisor until 2027.
On Oct. 9, 2023, the FEI suspended Lamaze for four years for violating anti-doping rules when he submitted the “fabricated medical documents,” referring to the disproven doctor letters.
Speaking minutes after the judge ruled in Iron Horse’s favour on Aug. 8, Frederiks said she was glad the ordeal was finished.
“I just feel so relieved that it’s over and that finally someone believed the truth,” she said, becoming emotional.
She added, “I think everything that happened is really sad for the sport.”
“And obviously, it’s really sad for Canada because (Lamaze) was a hero to so many people.”
