Alexandre Ayache Convicted of Forgery, To Appeal Decision

Dressage

France

On 13 February 2025 the Criminal Court of Thonon-les-Bains sentenced French Olympic team rider Alexandre Ayache to four-month suspended imprisonment.

The court found him guilty of having falsified documents in order to take ownership of a mare and resell her.

Forgery

According to Sport.fr the case dates back to 2016 and took almost ten years of legal battle. Ayache has been accused of forgery to claim full ownership of the Hanoverian mare Romy (by Rousseau x Rotspon) and resell her without the agreement of her co-owner, Laurence Giroud-Bigand.

According to La Voix du Nord, "the rider was introduced to Laurence Bigan-Giroud through a mutual friend, Jean V. in 2011. He offered to train a five-year-old mare, Romy, belonging to this woman. Alexandre Ayache quickly claimed that the training had failed and bought half of Romy for 2,000 euro. He kept at home a sales document where he and Laurence Bigan-Giroud appear as co-owners of the mare. Laurence Bigan-Giroud reportedly understood in 2014 that Romy was in fact healthy and well-trained, and that their mutual friend Jean V. rode her in competitions. Laurence Bigan-Giroud, for her part, decided to file a complaint. She obtained the mare's sales certificates and realized that her signature had been forged on a document that gave full ownership of Romy to Alexandre Ayache. A forensic expert concluded that the rider was most likely the forger."

Romy ended up selling to Belgian Under 25 rider Alexa Fairchild, who was training with Anky van Grunsven in The Netherlands at the time. Her husband Sjef Janssen was then Belgian Grand Prix team trainer. The mare competed internationally between 2019 and 2022.

Trial Postponed Until After the Olympics

According to the major French sports newspaper L'Equipe, the trial was postponed until after the Olympics.

L'Equipe wrote, "Ayache's lawyers had obtained the postponement of his trial, which was initially scheduled to take place just before the 2024 Olympic Games. Informed by the plaintiff before the Paris Olympic Games of the indictment of the rider, who is a member of the French team, the French Equestrian Federation and the National Olympic Committee both avoided addressing the issue."

The criminal court of Thonon-les-Bains requested an expert appraisal to estimate Romy 's value in order to be able to determine the plaintiff's loss.

Appeal

Mr. Rondoux, Ayache's lawyer, told L'Equipe: "I have received instructions from my client, Mr. Ayache, to immediately appeal this judgment (...). This case will therefore be retried by the Chambéry Court of Appeal. I will thus assert my client's rights before the Court to prove his total innocence in this ultimately commercial affair concerning the sale of a horse."