A gold medal-winning Canadian Olympic show jumper has been accused of faking brain cancer to avoid a court fight over allegations he got rich selling unfit horses.
Eric Lamaze, 55, was facing numerous lawsuits when he first announced in 2019 that he was battling glioblastoma, a rare and aggressive cancer, according to HorseSport.
In July, his then-attorney filed legal papers claiming that Lamaze’s cancer had “spread to his throat” and that he would need a “high-risk” craniotomy, temporarily removing part of his skull and leaving him “very possibly” unable to speak. permanently,” the report says.
However, the documents presented as evidence were soon shown to be forgeries, in part because they were written in Dutch, a language the named specialist does not speak.
Even Lamaze’s lawyer, Tim Danson, who has known him for 30 years, jumped ship and left with a damning statement at his last appearance with him in Ontario Superior Court earlier this month, according to the report.
“Eric is very sick, but he may not have cancer,” Danson said.
Eric Lamaze is accused of falsifying an aggressive cancer diagnosis to avoid a lawsuit. Toronto Star via Getty Images
Judge Marvin Kurz ruled earlier this month that Lamaze, who won gold in Beijing in 2008 after being previously disqualified for cocaine use, “faked end-stage cancer” to avoid a “day of reckoning” in the demand.
The jumper was ordered to pay the costs of previously missed hearings and has until October 9 to find a new lawyer or risk losing the lawsuit by default.
Lamaze has now blamed the falsified documents on a member of its staff who was doing “funny things.”
Lamaze won a gold medal at the Beijing Olympics in 2008. Getty Images
“The Dutch doctor never existed… I never had a Dutch doctor,” he admitted in interviews with The Daily Beast that also addressed his history of cocaine use and having a “really serious problem with alcohol.”
However, he maintained that he had not lied about his cancer, and even claimed that he walked out of a hospital in 2020 when he was only given two hours to live and somehow recovered on his own.
He also shared an undated photo of him looking frail in a hospital bed, and another showing a zigzag scar on his head, which he said was from surgery to treat his tumor.
Lamaze provided The Daily Beast with two undated photographs, including one of him in a hospital bed.
A neuro-oncologist told the outlet that such operations were more likely to leave “linear” scars, although he accepted that the shape of the wound was “theoretically possible” from the indicated surgery.
A plastic surgeon, Jay Calvert, told the outlet that a separate cavity near the rider’s nose was “consistent with cocaine use.”
Despite his assurances, lawyers for at least one of the horse owners who sued Lamaze have had doubts for years, and private investigators spotted him competing days after he announced his apparent battle with cancer in 2019.
Eric Lamaze also made millions buying and selling horses for wealthy clients. Picture Alliance via Getty Images
“You know, January 19 and 20, he’s on his deathbed from brain cancer. And on January 31, he will participate” in an event, an attorney in the case, Jerome Morse, told The Beast.
“We put an investigator on him… And indeed, throughout March he competed, and he competed quite well.”
Morse represents equestrian Karina Aziz, one of many who accuse Lamaze of selling horses that were unsuitable for show jumping, including, in Aziz’s case, one who was surgically deprived of sensation in a foot that later he became lame
Lamaze is now tasked with finding a new attorney before the trial on October 9. Getty Images
“They sold them these defective horses. And then Eric would say, ‘Oh, you’re a terrible rider, it’s not the horse, I’m an Olympic champion,’” Aziz told The Daily Beast of Lamaze, who amassed a fortune over the years buying and selling. high profile jumpers.
Lamaze, however, remained defiant.
“I’m not guilty. I mean, go ahead,” he told The Daily Beast. “It’s your job to check what you’re buying, not mine,” he told the outlet.
“In our business, [it’s] rich dad, princess girl. “They want what they can’t put together.”
While he was open about his heavy drinking and cocaine abuse, Lamaze insisted that drugs are not part of his current problems, because court battles have left him too penniless to be able to devote himself to anyone.
“Ask me to go buy a hamburger today, I can’t,” he lamented.
Categories: Trending
Source: vtt.edu.vn