STEWARDS GIVE THE ALL CLEAR. HORSES CAN, ONCE AGAIN. NOW GO STRAIGHT TO THE START AT EAGLE FARM

By Graham Potter | Monday, September 29, 2025

From Wednesday, it will be back to normal for horses going out onto the track at race meetings at Eagle Farm.

On Monday, stewards gave the all clear to end a protocol which has required riders to take their horses down to the home turn to see and, in theory, to let then get comfortable with the building construction site that has been taking place at that point of the track.

It has been fourteen months since Robbie Dolan was speared from the saddle of Victory Command after another horse shifted abruptly, an incident which had both immediate and long term consequences with jockeys not only refusing to ride in the last two races on the card that day (July 20, 2024) … but also deciding to effectively boycott the Eagle Farm venue until the perceived matter of horses shying from the construction site, which apparently had been a concern for some time, had been satisfactorily addressed.

Racing Queensland’s solution was to put, for want of a better description, a site screen in place to literally screen much of the view of the construction site from the horse’s line of sight, but that also came with the proviso that all horses would still have to be taken down to the point of the turn to familiarise themselves with the situation there before heading to the start.

This was brought in as a mandatory requirement when racing returned to Eagle Farm in September 2024, two months after the fall which sparked it all, and this ‘rule’ has been in pace ever since.

The steward’s removal of this requirement came after a series of jump-outs at Eagle Farm on Monday, meaning jockeys can now take their horses directly to the start.

There have been no reports of horses shying from the construction site in the fourteen months since the Robbie Dolan fall.

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