Cheltenham starts

[Tonge]

Apparently the jockeys are furious. Almost as if they don’t accept any responsibility for the chaos. Guess the horses are to blame…

[Gladiateur]

Agreed, Tonge.

I say it every year: the rule should be that they walk until the starter lets them go; any professional rider who cannot limit their mount to a walk isn’t worth the fee.

[LD73]

Coming in off a bend is the biggest issue (especially when you have double digit fields at the Festival) because those on the outside (who are covering more ground) simply have to come in faster than those on the inside (who are covering less ground) but once those on the inside see those on the outside speeding up they then speed up themselves and then it all goes pear shaped.

Cheltenham have more than enough space to move some of the railings on those starts that come off the bend to ensure the horses can form a straight line and all walk in together covering the same distance, this would pretty much automatically eliminate those on the outside having to go faster than those on the inside to keep up. While they are at it they also need to ensure that the horses aren’t too far away from the start when they begin walking in as that gives them more time to break from a walk/trot.

I think they should also do away with the tape at starts and just have the flag start races, which they started to do later in the week when the false starts continued and they didn’t bother reconnecting the tape (which cause more delays and winds the horses up that have to stand there while they reattached the tape and can cause horses to get kicked while they wait).

Why they need a review of last year’s review is quite frankly beyond me – I don’t really trust them to come up with a solution because rather than looking at the obvious problem and sorting it, they will go all around the houses talking about things that aren’t really relevant to the issue and try to bring in some overly complicated fix that will likely just make things worse.

Jockeys do need to step up and take some responsibility for the problems as do the starters in general, as I see almost on a daily basis them not letting a field go simply because they have all broken out of the walk/trot (even though they are in a good line and could easily be let go) but because the rules say that you can’t let them go like that, they don’t……..and sometimes a bit of common sense needs to be applied.

[runandskip84]

Rest assured it will be everyone’s fault except those that drew up the starting procedure..the BHA!
The 2m4f start for example has been in the same place for decades

[Author]

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