AN INVESTIGATION INTO a metal-bar training practice associated with Horse Sport Ireland’s eventing High Performance director Sally Corscadden found that the coach did not breach her terms of employment by permitting the practice in question.
Justice Clarke had been asked by Horse Sport Ireland to investigate whether the metal-bar training practice constituted ‘rapping’, which is against Federation Equestre Internationale training rules and, by extension, could have left Corscadden in breach of her terms of employment as Irish eventing’s High Performance director.
“It is important to emphasise that the Substantive Report concluded that the evidence that the practice would cause unnecessary pain or discomfort to a horse was inconclusive,” Justice Clarke noted. Justice Clarke added, however, that in his view, the coach “was in breach of her contract of employment by not drawing the attention of HSI to the fact that the metal-bar training practice was also in use when an investigation into not entirely dissimilar training methods was in train.