A shambolic start to the third event at Ruakaka, caused by a malfunction of the starting gates, threatened to bring racing to a halt at the popular meeting on Saturday.

Pressure from several runners saw the barriers burst open prematurely, with the Stephen Marsh-trained runner Darci’s Flight dislodging rider Sam Collett in the melee.

Confusion reigned as a number of horses continued on in the race while other jockeys heard the warning siren and pulled their mounts up after travelling just a few hundred metres.

Thankfully Collett was uninjured as stipendiary stewards went through the process of vetting all runners, initially announcing several late scratchings, before finally voiding the entire race.

An inspection of the barriers identified an issue with the start mechanisms which was rectified after remedial work was undertaken. The remaining races on the card were run with a manual start used to trigger the opening of the barriers.