THE Irish Jockeys Association believes its members can make a positive contribution to the British Horseracing Authority’s [BHA] impending review of Cheltenham Festival starting procedures.

False starts affected many of the Festival races this week, leading to standing starts being effected which left some runners at a disadvantage.

Following several false starts at the 2025 Festival, the BHA worked with the Professional Jockeys Association and the Jockey Club to discuss the issues that were contributing to problems at the start. Measured alterations were subsequently made to some starting locations. At the same time, work was undertaken with jockeys to ensure that the rules and procedures were understood by all participants ahead of the start of the 2026 Festival.

But this week the BHA accepted that “it is clear that more needs to be done. As such the BHA has committed to launch a full review of the starts at the Cheltenham Festival.”

The review will be specific to the Cheltenham Festival. A statement from the BHA said: “Away from the Festival the evidence is clear that starting procedures are working well, with approximately three in every 100 jump starts resulting in a false start.”

The review will consider factors such as the configuration of the course, the perspectives of riders from differing jurisdiction and licence types, the process of starting the race including the preliminaries and starting process, technology, the penalties and deterrents for rule breaches and the other, varied contributing factors which are unique to the Cheltenham Festival.

The review will take place in collaboration with the Jockey Club, the Professional Jockeys Association (PJA), the Irish Jockeys Association (IJA), National Trainers Federation (NTF) and representatives of jockeys and trainers. It will take place in time for any changes to be implemented ahead of the 2027 Festival.

Brant Dunshea, chief executive of the BHA, said: “We share the frustrations of jockeys, trainers and punters regarding the starts. We have full faith in our teams of starters, many of whom are former jockeys, and the data shows that away from the Festival our starting procedures work well.

“However, there are clearly several factors unique to Cheltenham which make the starting of races at the Festival extremely challenging, despite the measured changes made ahead of this year in collaboration with the jockeys and racecourse. We will therefore carry out this review ahead of the next Festival.”

Andrew Coonan of the IJA said: “I was contacted by Robin Mounsey of the BHA to see if we would participate and I said ‘Absolutely’. We want to have an involvement and give our views on what can be done.

“We haven’t made direct submissions to the BHA at this point in time, but we look forward to participating in that and helping them with it, and anything that we can contribute by way of improving the situation

“We’ve experienced all of this in Ireland. Our starts aren’t perfect by any means but we’ve learned an awful lot over the course of time in terms of how to handle this situation. In our view, there are some very obvious points that we could raise with the BHA.”

Coonan declined to elaborate on what those suggestions might be but said that his members had worked successfully with racing officials here in the past two years to improve starting procedures at the Punchestown Festival.

“If you look at how things have improved at Punchestown, that is a result of close work between the starters and the riders, and an understanding of the pressures that both the starter and the riders themselves are under.

“We find that when we work closely with the starter like that, it works and it certainly benefits everyone.”

Coonan is slow to suggest that increased penalties for riders who disobey the starter’s instructions is the solution.

“I’m always concerned about using the penalty structure as a means of dealing with issues like this,” he said. “First look at how we have improved the situation in Ireland in terms of the communications.

“I think we start by looking at what the problems are and how we best address it. And if we then find ourselves in a situation of ongoing breaches, then the whole issue of penalty structure has to be looked at, in the round.”