Australian Olympian Heath Ryan has been suspended for 18 months by equestrian’s international federation for animal abuse after a more than year-long investigation.
Ryan was stood down from the sport in June 2025 after the release of shocking leaked video footage showing him whipping a six-year-old stallion at least 41 times.
A tribunal at equestrian’s Swiss-based global governing body, Federation Equestre Internationale (FEI), has found he engaged in horse abuse and brought the sport into disrepute.
He has been suspended for 18 months, including the provisional ban he has already served, meaning he will not be able to return to competition until December.
Ryan was also fined 3000 Swiss francs ($5170) and ordered to contribute a further 3000 Swiss francs to the FEI’s legal costs.
Ryan was contacted for comment.
An assistant coach of the Australian team at the Atlanta, Sydney and Athens Olympics, who rode for Australia in dressage at the 2008 Beijing Games, the 68-year-old had denied the whipping constituted abuse, arguing that the horse had been untrainable and his actions had saved it from being sent to a knackery.
Ryan instigated proceedings against national federation Equestrian Australia in the NSW Supreme Court in July in a bid to clear his name.
He said at the time that the footage had been posted to social media by a disgruntled former employee two years after the event.
Ryan’s defence with the FEI included references and expressions of support from a range of people in the sport, including four-time Olympian and two-time bronze medallist Wayne Roycroft and fellow Olympians Vicki Roycroft and Boyd Martin.
Martin said in his statement to the FEI panel that the vision had been “weaponised by someone with a grudge unrelated to horse welfare” and omitted the 30 minutes of patient work before Ryan’s deployment of the whip and the horse’s compliance at the end.
Roycroft, who reached the podium for Australia in 1968 in Mexico City and 1976 in Montreal in team eventing and was the national coach for 22 years, told the FEI that he had known Ryan for half a century and would trust him with his horses.
A veteran member of one of the country’s greatest Olympic family dynasties, Roycroft said in his statement that he was initially concerned by the video but “the context was a horse that had seriously injured its owner and faced euthanasia”.
“In his view, the video shows the respondent asking the horse forward with consistent aids and no conflicting signals, and the horse has since been ridden without incident,” the panel said.
But the three-member tribunal, comprised of officials from Canada, the United States and Japan, found Ryan had breached the FEI’s code of conduct.
“Whatever the horse’s history and the respondent’s undoubted experience, the videos depict aggressive use of the whip to overcome the horse’s resistance,” the decision said.
“While the respondent may have genuinely believed that his training technique and use of the whip were necessary and appropriate given the context in which the horse came to him and its established resistances, the evidence provided shows that the use of the whip was excessive.”
According to an FEI veterinarian’s report, the whips were delivered at an average
of 1.3 strikes a second with 0.75 seconds between blows and “had no rational training value”.
In weighing up a penalty, the panel said it considered Ryan’s otherwise unblemished record over four decades in the sport and that his conduct “appeared to be a measured if misguided attempt to overcome the horse’s kicking resistance”.
“Weighing against the respondent are the gravity of the conduct as shown by the number and force of the strikes delivered to the horse,” it said.
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Chris Barrett is a senior sports reporter for The Sydney Morning Herald. He is a former South-East Asia correspondent for the Herald and The Age.Connect via X or email.From our partners
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