Sean Leslie, seen on the stand on the left, presses the button for the start of last year’s Hollywoodbets Durban July. (via youtube).
The starter will have what would seem to be the most pressurised job on the race course at around 16H00 on Saturday July, 5, but Sean Leslie, who pressed the button for the start of the Hollywoodbets Durban July last year, revealed, “You’ve just got to look at it as another race. You can’t let the pressure get to you.”
Last year was the first time Sean had pressed the button for the start of the big race, but the former on course farrier has been involved in many July starts as either a handler, farrier or assistant starter to Race Coast’s chief starter Solly Ngcobo.
He said it had not yet been decided who would press the button for this year’s Hollywoodbets Durban July.
However, he gave insight into the specific rolls of the starter who is on the stand and the starter who is behind the stalls.
He said, “The guy at the back supervises the loading and makes sure the horses are all going in in the right order. He tells them when to load and once all of the horses are in, he checks that the back gates are all closed. Once the back gates are closed, he raises the white flag to indicate that it’s all clear behind to jump. Then it’s up to the starter in front to make sure all of the horses’ heads are straight and everybody can jump.”
False starts are a controversial subject.
Sean said about calling a false start, “It’s a hard one because you’ve got a split second to make that decision. Generally, you try and leave it up to the Stipes to make that call, unless you really see that the horses have got the gates open early and you can make that decision at the time.”
By leaving it to the stipendiary stewards, in the case, for example, whereby a horse rears as the button is pressed, the stipes can make a call to declare the horse a runner in the case where the rear was just an independent movement by the horse, or to declare it a non-runner in the case where the horse was impeded by the handler as it was attempting to jump out of the starting stalls.
Of course in some circumstances the most pressurised job becomes that of the on course veterinarian.
This was seen in 2019 when Dr Roehann Sutherland had to make the tough but correct call to scratch the star colt Hawwaam as he had hit his hindquarters in the gate and was lame for a short while.
