Procedures defended after series of Festival false starts

British Horseracing Authority starter Robbie Supple has defended existing procedures after a series of unsatisfactory starts at the Cheltenham Festival.

Tuesday’s Ultima Handicap Chase required three attempts to get underway while Wednesday’s Queen Mother Champion Chase had a standing start, a factor which Nico de Boinville felt had impacted on eventual second and hot favourite Jonbon’s chances.

There was further incident in the very first race on day three when Willie Mullins’ Maughreen whipped around as the runners were sent on their way at the second time of asking, putting paid to her chances.

After finishing second aboard Sixandahalf in the opening Ryanair Mares’ Novices’ Hurdle in which the Maughreen incident occurred, Keith Donoghue said: “I think the starters are trying to stay with the rules that they have when they have seven runners, but with 24 runners there, you’re not going to get them all to walk in in a line.

“I think they have to use their heads sometimes and just drop the flag and let them go when it looks reasonable enough.”

Further races on Thursday also saw the starter intervene, with jockey Robert James suspended for two days after the stewards found he had not approached the tape at a walk or a jig-jog pace aboard Conflated, resulting in a false start to the TrustATrader Plate Handicap Chase.

Supple told ITV racing: “We want them to come in at a walk or a jig-jog if possible and wait until we drop the flag. We raise the flag to invite them to come forward and when everyone is where we’d like them to be, we’ll drop the flag for them to go. It’s the same year round, really.

“We’ve got to keep it fair to the ones who are obeying the rules. If we start to let them go when they’re cantering, they’re only going to get quicker, as it has done in the past.

“We reviewed the starts in 2014 because all of the horses were coming in too fast, especially at the Festival and at Aintree, and what it did cause was they started galloping from further away from the start and they were going quicker by the time they got to the first fence.”

He added: “The fact is we can’t start the race until it’s the correct time. When it’s a big field of horses, they’ve got to go back far enough so the idea is when they reach us, it’s the correct time.

“In one of the races on Tuesday they were way ahead of time, two of our team advised them that they were ahead of the time and they ignored them and kept coming and we can’t start the race too early.

“We’re trying to be fair to everybody and in our opinion, we’ve had fair starts. OK, maybe every horse hasn’t got the start they have wanted. It’s certainly fairer to have them standing in a straight line, rather than ones on the inside strung out a couple of lengths ahead of the others. That’s what we’re trying to establish and we’re just trying to be fair to everybody.”