The current restrictions on sports around the globe have created an increase in racing engagement. While the physical spectators at the tracks are gone there has been a spiked increase in viewership via television and digital platforms, attracting the attention of new or low engagement audiences who may normally occupy their attention on other sports.

So now is the time to hold this engagement by ensuring that everything runs smoothly coming out of the gate. To make sure your races are running as planned here are four considerations surrounding your starting gate to think about before race day:

1.  Loading times

Loading horses into the gate as smoothly as possible will help to make sure your races run on time. This can be improved by maximising the entrance width for the horse being led into the gate. Steriline Racing’s Platinum starting gate offers a whole 135 degrees of room on each stall.  With so many more people currently watching the start of a race, ensuring on-time loading without incident is more important than ever as well as running your races on time with fewer scratchings.

Download here: Choosing your best starting gate solution

2.  How quiet is your starting gate? 

There are a lot of audible stimulations for a horse on race day, though a noisy gate should not be one of them. Your gate should be as quiet as possible during loading to ensure everything goes smoothly. There should be no rattles, banging or clanging. How you can quieten your gate is to replace worn-out padding, as well as following our maintenance guides, have the gate serviced on a regular basis and ensure bolts are tightened, etc

3.  Improving barrier attendants working conditions

Steriline has recently developed new features which can be added to old gates such as the barrier attendant safety step. This not only keeps the horse and jockey safe but the barrier attendant too.

4.  Pre-race, monthly and yearly maintenance

To ensure your race starts continue to operate at an even start every race, it is important to follow a maintenance plan and routine. Safety and wellbeing are of the utmost importance for all involved around the track and gate maintenance can add to a smoother race day.

Steriline has taken the hard work out of this for you with a safety checklist that you can sign off each race and month. This one is a little tough while times are busy around the track but right now it has never been more important.  See Steriline's pre-race and monthly checklist here.

To keep your new and existing viewers happy, do the little things to get every horse over the finish line for each race. It is recommended that a starting gate service is conducted by a trained Steriline technician to make sure everything is in top condition. Where this is not possible due to the current COVID-19 restrictions, please contact us outlining any current issues you may be aware of and one of our technicians will review and reply.

Maintain your starting gate - click here to download the recommended maintenance checklist to get the most out of our gate on race day