Day 2 of the team dressage competition at the 2010 Alltech FEI World Equestrian Games got off to a rough start. The fifth rider to go, and third at bat for the gold-medal-positioned Dutch team, was eliminated by the head of the ground jury, Stephen Clarke of Great Britain, when Clarke spotted evidence of blood coming from the horse’s mouth.

It was a crushing disappointment for rider Adelinde Cornelissen, who said in a press conference afterward that her horse, the thirteen-year-old Dutch Warmblood gelding Jerich Parzival, had had the best warm-up of his life. Parzival looked to be on his way to a stellar score when the bell rang immediately after the halt and rein back. An obviously confused Cornelissen turned to listen to Clarke and then leaned down to look at her horse’s mouth, then waved gamely to the crowd as she exited.

In the press conference, the WEG’s FEI chief steward for dressage, FEI “O” judge Dr. Wojtek Markowski of Poland, read the pertinent FEI rule to the journalists in attendance. Simply put, it’s a zero-tolerance policy regarding blood coming from a horse’s mouth–cause for immediate elimination, regardless of the cause or severity. In Parzival’s case, the horse had evidently bitten the very tip of his tongue sometime after he was given the post-warm-up green light to enter the ring; and even a small amount of blood can turn a horse’s foamy saliva an alarming shade of red