Starting gate
machine used to ensure a fair start to a horse race
A starting gate, also called a starting barrier or starting stalls, is a machine used to ensure a fair start to in horse racing and dog racing.
History
Throughout the history of horse racing, there have been proposals as to how better to start a race. A commonly used starting system for horse races was devised in the mid nineteenth century by Admiral Rous, a steward of the Jockey Club and public handicapper. A starter, standing alongside the jockeys and horses, dropped his flag to signal the start. An assistant some 100 yards down the course raised a second flag to indicate false starts.
An official starter might be well paid, but his duties were very demanding. Early in the twentieth century, he was supported by perhaps a single assistant who primed the spring-barrier, as well as the clerk of the course. In the present day there are many attendants to steady runners from super-structured barrier stalls.
The first horse racing starting barriers were simple ropes or occasionally wooden barriers behind which the horses stood. The first automated design was pioneered in Australia and was first used at an official race meeting in 1894.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Starting gate” as machine used to ensure a fair start to a horse race. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 20, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1748673. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1894.
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This entry incorporates text from “Starting gate” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.