October
FebruaryDon't watch, act
In race three at Murray Bridge on Tuesday January 26, eventual winner Battistoni travelled deep for the entire 900m event.
So deep in fact that on the home turn he scouted a path to the outside fence. From the 300m to the finish, the horse was no more than one or two metres from punters standing against the railing.
For obvious safety reasons, no race club would allow patrons to stand against the inside fence so I simply cannot understand how they allow punters to stand against the outside fence whilst a 500kg animal hurtling forward at 50km/h races past.
So close was Battistoni to the outside fence that he actually took a few patrons by surprise — you can see on the replay that a few stepped back suddenly.
All it is going to take is for one person to be hanging over the fence, waving their hands about, a horse ducks out towards the rail and someone is going to get seriously injured.
The fact it has not happened before (and is relatively unlikely to happen in future) is no justification for a lack of action.
You don’t need to have an accident in order to prevent one. This needs to be addressed.
Carnegie (Vic)