ENDA Bolger has been fined €2,000 following an incident at Punchestown earlier this month, where one of his horses ran in the wrong race.

On the day, prior to the running of the fifth race, a maiden hurdle, it was discovered that the Bolger-trained Dont Tell Jack had been brought into the parade ring instead of stable companion Centreofattention.

It was only then that officials realised that Centreofattention had mistakenly run in a chase earlier in the day instead of Dont Tell Jack. The trainer was not present on the day.

At a Referrals Committee hearing, Bolger “sincerely apologised for the error, which he said has caused him much embarrassment”.

At a separate hearing, trainer John McConnell was fined €1,000 over a similar incident at Dundalk on November 5th. On the day, two McConnell-trained runners in the same race, Waystar and Together Aclaim, had to be resaddled due to the incorrect saddles being placed on the two horses. It was the trainer’s third offence in a 12-month period.

McConnell explained that he was not at the races himself on any of the three occasions where this occurred, but he had put measures in place following the two previous incidents of a similar nature to ensure there were no further incidents of saddles being mixed up when he had multiple runners.

He apologised that those measures had failed in this instance, but that resources were stretched as two senior staff members were attending to runners in Britain on the same day.