'DO NOT GET ME STARTED!'

Rolf Johnson leaps into the jumps riddle of the false starts that seem never-ending

- Rolf Johnson

A one-time run of the mill jockey strode into the weighing room on his first day in his next job and announced, “In future you call me sir!” He was the new starter.

Poachers turned gamekeepers - converts are the staunchest zealots. Know any gamekeepers who turned into famous poachers? Former jockeys swap saddles for roles as starters, stewards' secretaries, course inspectors, judges, all the officials they'd once ‘tried it on with’; and boy do they relish the chance to lay down the law instead of being trampled under it.

They'd enjoyed higher profiles in the saddle - but not the instant everlasting infamy bestowed on the starters for the 1993 and 2007 Grand National debacles. A third avoided crucifixion for the abortive beginnings at the four-day Cheltenham Festival when it was finally accepted that ‘procedures’ were as guilty as any individual for a succession of false starts.

‘Starter’ for ten: how many times did Robbie Supple ride in the Grand National? Answer, six. Ask how many times was he obliged to recall runners at Cheltenham 2025? Answer - better ask how many he didn’t.

But where do we start? In the old days it was triers to the front, ‘non-buzzers’ out the back. And then the ‘nicker elastic’ would twang and they were ‘off’ - well some were. In those days starters, usually ex-military men, were used to giving orders and to be fair, they'd seen ‘action’ - ‘good Wars’. Officialdom looked down on jockeys (not only from the starter’s rostrum) as “little oiks”. I was down the start at Windsor one day when elastic was still stretched across the track; 20 years later we caught up with the Americans and adopted the ‘boxes’. The Sporting Life headlined “Stalls off to a good start”.