We need to change how horse races are stopped before there is a tragedy | Horse racing

Racing got here perilously near a calamity on Saturday night, and had occasions unfolded in a different way after 9 runners set off for essentially the most priceless race of the night time at Chelmsford, this column would possibly properly have opened with the phrases “Racing continues to be in shock …” as an alternative.

The beginning of the Essex monitor’s 8.30 race was solely unremarkable, however what occurred subsequent was, within the phrases of a racecourse spokesperson, “unprecedented”. The tractor used to drag the beginning stalls off the monitor failed, and the gate was nonetheless in the course of the house straight because the runners started to show for residence with their riders beginning to stoke them up for the ultimate run to the road.

It’s a tribute to the good reactions and professionalism of all involved – together with the starter, who ran down the course with a warning flag to alert the jockeys on their manner again round – that every one 9 managed to drag up earlier than reaching the stalls.

There was additionally a good measure of excellent fortune concerned. As Harry Davies, who turned in fifth aboard Intricacy, instructed the Racing Put up, “they had been all good horses with good mouths who responded rapidly to us. Youthful or extra inexperienced horses are likely to run with their blood up and may’t all the time be pulled up so rapidly, so we had been fortunate in some ways.”

Alistair Rawlinson, who turned for residence in second place, agreed. “It might have been a catastrophe,” he instructed Racing TV. “I used to be filling my lad up and I noticed the starter, who had ran from the stalls, as a result of there’s been an issue, into the center of the monitor. I noticed the flag, seemed up and the stalls had been nonetheless there and let loose a yell.

“We did miraculously properly to cease as a result of there have been some eager horses in there and we didn’t go overly quick, so to cease that fast, the lads deserve a pat on the again.”

So, a possible disaster was – narrowly – averted. However amid the reduction, there have been instant questions as to how and why it had proved unattainable to cease the race sooner. “We should always have had extra of a warning,” jockey Marco Ghiani mentioned. “For my part there ought to be a flag man in every nook of the monitor. If we had been midway down the again straight, we might have recognized and stopped extra safely.”

The British Horseracing Authority is, as you’ll anticipate, inquiring into the circumstances surrounding Saturday’s incident, however evidently there was merely no time to get an official with a flag to the again stretch or far flip earlier than the runners arrived. Fortunately, the starter had the presence of thoughts – and fleetness of foot – to get himself simply far sufficient down the course to draw the riders’ consideration in time.

However extra usually, it additionally appears truthful to marvel why the process for stopping a race nonetheless relies upon so closely on individuals waving flags within the first place. In France, because the coach Daniel Kubler identified, “they’ve sirens and flashing lights” to alert riders {that a} race must be stopped. Had such a system been in place at Chelmsford – which is, in lots of respects, probably the most up-to-date tracks within the nation – the sphere would most likely have pulled up earlier than midway.

There would, little question, be a major value connected to updating the methods – or, for that matter, to taking on Ghiani’s suggestion of a flag official at every nook – whereas the exact problem encountered on Saturday is, admittedly, vanishingly uncommon. In a majority of Britain’s 6,300 annual races on the Flat, in spite of everything, the sphere doesn’t even return to its place to begin.

However an pressing have to cease a race as swiftly as potential, maybe for a purpose that was unattainable to foresee, is inevitable infrequently. Older readers, in the meantime, might recall {that a} failure of the flag system was an element, not less than, within the void Grand Nationwide in 1993, which was British racing’s most devastating monetary and PR catastrophe of latest many years.

Thirty-one years later, it was nonetheless thanks largely to an alert official with a flag that one other potential calamity was narrowly prevented. Subsequent time round, we will not be so lucky, and the excessive drama at Chelmsford on Saturday ought to absolutely be the second when the game lastly brings its methods for stopping a race into the twenty first century.