Longtime East Coast trainer Steve Klesaris has been suspended 15 days and assessed a $1,000 fine for a gabapentin positive found in the mare She's Awesome after she won a $45,000 claiming race Nov. 9 at Aqueduct Racetrack.
Klesaris said he was offered the chance to receive a reduced penalty for accepting fault for the controlled medication violation. He said he chose to go to an Internal Adjudication Panel hearing because he was not guilty.
"I wanted to speak out for all the trainers that are being penalized for these miniscule amounts that have no bearing on the performance of a horse," he told BloodHorse. "And we are not talking about major narcotics. What we are talking about is contamination."
Klesaris told IAP member Richard Abbott during a July 30 hearing that his then 4-year-old filly, owned by the trainer with Hibiscus Stables, had been assigned to the Aqueduct auxiliary receiving barn used for overflow from the track's two receiving barns. The trainer call the barn "dirty and unkempt" and that employees frequently used the stalls as toilets because there was only one men's bathroom and one women's bathroom for hundreds of workers.
He blamed the gabapentin positive on exposure to contaminated urine in the stall. The trainer said She's Awesome's A sample came back with 1 nanogram of gabapentin per milliliter of plasma and the B sample returned a lower level at around 890 picograms/ml. The Horseracing Integrity and Welfare Unit, which enforces the Anti-Doping and Medication Program for the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Authority, uses a screening threshold of 1 ng/ml of serum or plasma for gabapentin. This threshold is not published but it has been incorporated into a number of changes proposed that were submitted to the Federal Trade Commission. Also, the testing of the B sample is done to confirm the presence of the banned substance. The estimated concentrations of both samples are not required to match, according to HIWU.
"You have no idea who has been in the stall ahead of you, and by their nature horses are going to lick the walls, paw at the ground, and they are going to lick the ground," Klesaris said. "I don't understand why HISA is not coming down on these racetracks to provide more sanitary receiving barns, padlock the stalls between horses, put cameras in every receiving barn stall so we can see what's going on, and why we are not testing every racetrack employee cleaning these stalls so we know what medications they are on."
Gabapentin is a medication commonly used in people as an anti-spasmodic and to treat neuropathy and other neurological pain. The drug has off-label uses to treat fibromyalgia, bipolar disorder, anxiety, and migraine, among other conditions. In horses, clinical and anecdotal reports suggest gabapentin is useful in managing pain.
Klesaris said he doesn't consider gabapentin a useful medication in horses. He said the drug is not in his barn and he has not had a veterinarian give it to his horses.
"We need to revisit these rules and thresholds. We cannot have zero tolerance anymore," he said. "Owners are going to get disenchanted with the game because they are losing purses and trainers are going to be run out of business."
The IAP hearing did find any aggravating circumstances associated with Klesaris' positive and it also did not find any "significant fault or negligence," though it also noted the trainer was not entitled to bear no fault or negligence.
Klesaris began his 15-day suspension Aug. 8. She's Awesome was disqualified from her Nov. 9 race at Aqueduct and the $24,750 purse forfeited. The mare was claimed in this race by trainer Linda Rice for Winning Move Stable, which won three races with her before she was claimed again May 16 by trainer Rudy Rodriguez and now races for Mark Healey's Big Toe Stables and Susan Thompson.
