How often at the Cheltenham Festival or the Grand National have we seen the horses – or their jockeys – getting a little too keen at the start, jostling for the best position, hitting the line at too fast a pace and causing the starter to raise their flag for a false start.
Generally speaking, the riders simply reassemble at the start line with a bit more composure and calm, and the second time around the race gets underway without a hitch.
However, this isn’t always the case – and in Flat racing, where stalls may be used to ensure a ‘fair’ start, the outcome is anything but.
There are some specific rules about false starts in horse racing that could have an impact upon how your bet is settled, while a new directive in Flat racing from 2024 onwards could see your wager settled as a non-runner if your horse is unable or willing to get off to a fair start in a race.
What is a False Start in Horse Racing?
We can look at the issue of false starts in horse racing in two different contexts: races with starting stalls and those without.
Many Flat racing venues in the UK and Ireland use starting stalls – loading the horses into the stalls to ensure that they all, theoretically, have a chance to get off to a fair start.
And it works, in principle, although there are instances in which the stalls can malfunction – enabling some horses to gain an unfair advantage if their stall has opened correctly.
Sometimes, racecourse officials have to intervene to keep horses calm in the stalls, or sometimes a horse may be misbehaving to the point that they aren’t ready for the stalls to open.
Generally, false starts are kept to a minimum in Flat racing – although they do happen, as the chaos that unfolded at a meeting at Wolverhampton in April 2024 confirms. We’ll reveal why nine of the eleven runners in that particular race were disqualified in a moment.
In some Flat meetings and pretty much every National Hunt race, there’s more of a relaxed start – the jockeys will assemble their horses at the start line. However, some can become a little too keen to get started, or may act up and interfere with other runners in the field.
And some races have a moving start, with some hitting the start line at a quicker pace than others – ensuring they have an unfair advantage.
In these instances, the starter will raise their flag – with the field forced to reassemble at the start. unless they go on to ‘finish’ the course, as happened at Wolverhampton in the example mentioned earlier.
False Start Rules in Horse Racing Betting
One of the interesting things about false starts in horse racing is that the starter has the power to disqualify a horse from the race if they continuously misbehave and cause a false start. In this case, your bets will be settled as a loss
It’s a different matter when a horse is disqualified after a race, where the First Past the Post rules mean that you will be paid out if they ‘win’ and later hit with a DQ.
Generally speaking, a false start does not have an outcome on the end result of a race – once the field has been reassembled, the race will (hopefully) start properly next time, with bets settled accordingly.
However, if a jockey does not hear or realise that a false start has been called, they may complete some or all of the course. They may decide that the horse has run too far and that it would be contrary to the horse’s welfare to make them run in the race, in which case they may be declared a non-runner and your bet will be refunded.
But there’s a bizarre technicality to be aware of: if there’s a false start and your horse completes the full race and crosses the finishing line, they will then be disqualified from the race proper – bizarre, but true.
To use the language of a bookmaker, ‘stakes will be refunded on selections not taking part in the re-run’, while bets on horses that do run in the race proper, albeit in a smaller field of runners, will likely be subject to Rule 4 deductions. With a smaller field, it’s also possible that the number of places paid will be reduced accordingly too.
In the unlikeliest of scenarios, two or more false starts can see a race be abandoned entirely. There’s only a very small chance of that happening, but it did occur at the 1993 Grand National. That outcome was so controversial, and Aintree officials so crucified, that such an outcome won’t happen again unless absolutely unavoidable; bookies were forced to refund millions of pounds worth of bets amid the carnage.
False Start Rules for Flat Races
With most Flat races starting from stalls, there’s a higher risk of dodgy starts due to technical malfunctions and the like.
For a number of years, punters could be left short-changed when the horse they had backed got off to a slow start due to the stalls not opening properly – or when another runner in the field got off to a super-fast start after breaking out of the stalls prematurely.
But rule changes introduced in 2024 will help to negate that, with a new ‘fair start’ directive allowing stewards to declare a horse as a non-runner when it has been unable to get away from the stalls cleanly.
Of course, all bets on non-runners in this fashion should be voided and your stake returned, whereas before the rule change they would have likely been settled as a loss.
There’s a myriad of reasons why a horse wouldn’t get a fair start from the stalls, from the machinery malfunctioning to a horse themselves misbehaving. Sometimes, the jockey may not be positioned properly when the stalls open if their horse is trying to buck and kick out, or a handler may be holding the horse at the time that the race starts.
In short, if your horse is considered to be at a disadvantage at the start, there’s a strong chance they’ll be declared a non-runner under the new rules.