Riding star Eric Lamaze is in trouble
Olympic champion faked cancer
September 11, 2023, 3:34 p.m
Eric Lamaze has to face a trial in which possible fraud by the show jumper is to be negotiated. But the Olympic champion tries to evade the process. With unimaginable means, as the court finds.
Eric Lamaze has been a successful show jumper for many years, he is a star of the scene: in 2008 the Canadian won the gold medal at the Olympic Games in Beijing, eight years later he won another Olympic bronze in Rio de Janeiro. But now a court in Ontario, Canada, found something outrageous: the now 55-year-old faked cancer in order, the court announced, to prolong or even collapse a trial against him. The lawsuit alleges that Olympic champion Lamaze sold animals at an inflated price.
Lamaze announced in May 2019 that he had been diagnosed with brain cancer in late 2017. The Canadian later claimed during the trial that the cancer had spread and that his larynx was now also affected. “Mr. Lamaze attempted to defraud the court by submitting three forged letters falsely purporting to be medical reports about Mr. Lamaze’s poor health,” one of the judges of the Ontario Superior Court of Justice announced. Lamaze’s lawyer handed over three documents to the court that documented the Olympic champion’s poor health and allegedly came from a leading Brussels cancer center.
“I don’t know the patient”
One of the letters that Lamaze presented as proof of his illness was written in Dutch by a neurosurgeon – even though he didn’t speak the language at all. Doubts about Lamaze’s illness grew among the court and the plaintiffs. A private detective commissioned by the plaintiff then confirmed the doubts: “I did not write this document and, above all, I do not know the patient in question,” the doctor told the court from whom the supposed report on Lamazes health status came from.
“As if this fraud wasn’t egregious enough, Mr. Lamaze also faked terminal cancer, which was an insult to all who suffered from this dreaded disease. He did this only to achieve a “day of reckoning” all in one “To avoid proceedings that were initiated more than ten years ago but have not yet been heard.”
“A small mistake”
Lamaze’s longtime attorney, Tim Danson, told The Globe and Mail that he was blindsided by the new findings and asked to be removed from the trial. Danson is convinced that Lamaze actually has an illness that affects his decision-making. “Something’s wrong. The Eric Lamaze I’m dealing with is not the Eric Lamaze I’ve been dealing with in the past. And the real Eric Lamaze would never get involved in something like that, but I can’t ignore it , what was presented to me.”
Lamaze admitted to the Toronto Star that he made “a small mistake” when he submitted a false document to the court to delay a trial. However, he insists that he actually has cancer.
The deception almost worked: After the diagnosis was announced, the plaintiff family considered giving up the case, which they had been pursuing for almost a decade at that point, the plaintiffs said. “Everyone portrayed him as a hero. But I felt that what had happened to me was wrong and I wanted to continue searching for the truth. I think that people really need to know the truth about who everyone was have admired over the last 15 years.”