Being a racecaller requires the ability to react quickly to what you see in front of you but one American commentator was left dumbfounded after a once-in-a-lifetime accident took place at Hoosier Park at Anderson, Indiana.
As he called them round the bend and up to the top of the stretch the camera panned out and the viewer suddenly realised that the staff had the track had failed to remove the starting stalls after the field had left them - and they were all going straight towards them at full tilt.
Having broken from his description of the race the commentator only managed to leave a couple of seconds of dead air before coming up with: “hold all tickets, hold all tickets”.
With horses pulling on the hand brakes and jockeys being flipped over rails hither and yon, you’d have thought the man behind the mic might have been able to come up with a more pressing issue to bring up than whether or not punters should scrunch up their dockets.
As wild as the scenes that unfolds is, however, it didn’t turn out to be quite as bad as looked likely when the field came round the final bend at full tilt. Fingers cross all two and four-legged participants in that farce came out of it ok!
Whoever was meant to be shifting those stalls with the attached tractor can surely expect a royal rollicking off the clerk after this.
Take a look at the remarkable scene as it unfolds below.
The officials FORGOT to remove the starting stalls as they come into the home straight! 😲
