Austrian FEI rider Ulrike Prunthaller has been convicted to a nine month ban from competition and a 4,000 euro fine for the application of "painful and illegal training methods" to her horses. Her coach Friedrich Atschko is fined 5,000 euro for conscientiously supporting these methods.
The Ulrike Prunthaller case was initiated in 2011, when grooms working at equestrian Bartlgut made an anonymous testimony on Youtube revealing that Bartlgut's head rider Prunthaller and coach Atschko were training the Bartlgut horses with an electric shock device as well as intentionally hurting them with stones under the noseband and nails pricking into the horses' whithers. The owners of Bartlgut immediaitely took legal action against the grooms and made an online statement that they were being black mailed.
Almost two years later the disciplinary committee of the Tiroler Equestrian Society cast its legal verdict in the case on Monday 11 February 2013. It charged both rider and trainer as guilty. Both are appealing this verdict.
"Such training methods are never acceptable under any conditions," said Dr. Angelika May, chair of the Innsbruck court hourse which ruled on the case. "They are to be loathed, they give the horses significant pain, suffering and big fear. Therefore a punishment of general and specific preventative grounds is required. Ulrike Prunthaller should set an example as a competition rider, which she did not fulfil."
Prunthaller and Atschko were both represented by their lawyers. May stated in addition that "the court considers it proven that these animals were treated with electricity. Nobody could expain to us what this electric shock device was doing in the riding stable. People are not allowed to work this way."
The pair was cleared of the charges that they injured their horses with screws, nails, stones and other unwanted artefacts. Evidence lacked on this matter.
The court explained its decision for a 9-month ban based on several facts. Though crimes had been perpetrated willinglt, the arbitration has taken into account that Prunthaller is without previous convictions and that she had not been sent to any international shows since autumn 2011 by the Austrian Equestrian Federation due to a lack of clarification of the accusations. Moreover she had been under considerable pressure due to media coverage.
Prunthaller and Atschko have been given four weeks time to appeal this verdict.
Source: OEPS
Photos © Astrid Appels
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