By TOM BRENNAN -- Calgary Sun
 He was among the most unlikely of big-league equestrians.

 Product of a broken home in a poor neighbourhood in Montreal, armed with only a Grade 8 education, Eric Lamaze overcame those obstacles to become a popular and rising -- maybe the rising -- star of the sport in Canada.

 Lamaze, who began riding at age 10, broke into the national team for the first time in 1993. By the end of '95, he'd won a Spruce Meadows national and been part of a Canadian squad that won Nations Cups in New Jersey and Toronto.

 In 1996, he earned a spot on the Canadian Olympic team, but tested positive for cocaine following the trials and was suspended for four years by the Canadian Equestrian Federation.

 The sentence was reduced to seven months after Lamaze appealed on the grounds he took cocaine three times for personal use, rather than to get a competitive edge.

 When he returned to Spruce Meadows in '97, Lamaze candidly answered any and all questions about the episode.

 While he'd used drugs as a teen, he said, he hadn't touched them for 10 years, until running into an old friend with whom he did cocaine.

 "I'm not a drug addict," he said at the time. "It came back into my life, I didn't see it coming, and that's the scary part.

 "That's what the message would be, that if you've ever once done drugs in your life, and you think it's no longer part of you, it doesn't take much for things to come back.

 "It's a hard feeling to describe. There is a lot of embarrassment that comes with it. I'm a regular person who made a regular mistake, a human mistake, a big mistake. I'm ashamed of it. I have to get over it, look past it, get on with my life."

 He appeared to have done exactly that.

 Outside the show ring, he spoke to numerous groups about the perils of drugs.

 Inside it, he revived his career.

 A bronze medallist in the team event at the '99 Pan Am Games, Lamaze was having an outstanding 2000 season.

 After capturing the Spruce Meadows National, he returned a few weeks later to win an unprecedented five of nine open jumper events, on three different horses -- including the Chrysler Classic Derby -- at the North American.

 He also moved into 10th spot on Spruce Meadows' all-time money list, with more than $560,000 in earnings.

 Lamaze qualified for the Sydney Olympics, with his horse Millcreek Raphael, before the latest bombshell.

 "It's very, very sad -- he's a well-liked member of our community, " Canadian team Chef d'Equipe Torchy Millar said yesterday. "I don't know whether we should shake him by the lapels or whatever. We'd like to change his behaviour."

 That wish has apparently come too late.

 Yesterday, Lamaze was slapped with a lifetime ban from competition. He said he plans to appeal.

 "It is a sad day for all of us," explained Don Adams, executive director of the Canadian Equestrian Federation.