Golden Gate bars vet for 30 days

Golden Gate Fields stewards have fined trainer Jeff Bonde $1,000, suspended a veterinarian for 30 days, and disqualified a Bonde-trained horse from her first-place finish in a Sept. 1 Bay Meadows race after a positive test result for metabolites of the painkiller lidocaine.

The horse, El Sierra Tahoe, showed a presence of the metabolites in postrace testing by the Maddy Analytical Laboratory at the University of California at Davis. The ruling leaves El Sierra Tahoe unplaced, with $10,200 in purse money ordered returned for redistribution.

After an initial finding showed no presence of a reported Lasix dose in El Sierra Tahoe's system, the veterinarian, Dr. Kim Kuhlmann, explained to stewards that there had been an apparent mix-up in the attempted administering of Lasix to the filly.

Kuhlmann said he had administered lidocaine to another horse the previous day, and that the syringe with the remaining lidocaine was apparently misplaced. Kuhlmann said he used it by mistake when he subsequently administered what he thought was Lasix to El Sierra Tahoe.

The suspension was only 30 days because stewards believed the incident was a mistake instead of willful.

Bonde's fine was the result of finding syringes without needles in his barn. The syringes are legal but not allowed in the barn area.

* Stewards fined trainer Greg Gilchrist $1,500 and disqualified Yodelay You're Who from first and left him unplaced in the second race at Bay Meadows on Sept. 26 because of an excessive level of procaine, a painkiller. Purse money of $7,200 will be redistributed.