Obviously, the word ‘ticket’, in the sense of a piece of paper or cardboard that serves as evidence that the holder is entitled to a certain right, can apply to various items inside and outside the world of horse racing. Indeed, readers of a certain age may nostalgically recall the distinctive, brightly-coloured betting tickets that were handed out by bookmakers in the days before the on-course market became a shadow of its former self.
However, to a racehorse trainer, the word ‘ticket’ has a specific meaning, above and beyond anything to do with betting. A ‘ticket’ is, in fact, a request from a trainer for a horse to be granted special dispensation, by the starter, to be loaded into the starting stalls as late as possible and, preferably, last. Such requests are typically made for horses who are habitually problematic at the start but, once a trainer has picked up three tickets for the same horse, in the interests of safety, the horse must take, and pass, an official stalls test before it is allowed to run again.
A stalls test typically, but not always, takes place at a racecourse, half an hour or so before the first race of the day, and requires a horse to enter the starting stalls with the assistance of a maximum of five stalls handlers – one in front and no more than four behind – and remain there, calm and relaxed, for sixty seconds or more. Failure to do so means that the horse must take the test again, but cannot do so for two weeks; if it fails the test again, it cannot take another test, or race, for six months. A routine blood or urine sample is taken after a stalls test to ensure that the horse has not been adminstered any prohibited substances, such as sedatives, to allow it to pass the test.