Racing Australia Takes Action Over 'Sexually Explicit' Race Horse Names At Aussie Track

Racing Australia certainly wasn't happy when the names of two racehorses were blared over the speakers at a recent race meet.

Deagon Racecourse in the outer suburbs of Brisbane rounded out 2020 with a couple of races.

It was all fine and dandy until the eighth race saw the arrival of 'Lovin' Deqoque'.

The race horse eventually finished fourth in that battle and it's not hard to imagine how the name was yelled out. If you're still struggling, the Deqoque can sound a lot like De-c**k.

If the embarrassing name wasn't enough, the following race saw 'Get On Deqoque' finish second.

While racing fans were bursting at the seams when they looked at the race guide, Racing Australia insisted the names were actually pronounced 'Lovin' De-quo' and 'Get On De-quo'.

CEO of Racing Australia Myles Forman told 7News: "We contact the owners when they lodge the names to make sure we know how the horse names are pronounced and what the meaning of the name is.

"And in this case it's De-quo."

Despite this, the confusion was simply too much for Racing Australia to allow the names to be potentially mispronounced at another race meeting.

As a result, they've kindly asked the owners if they had any other names they'd like to bless their horses with.

"Racing Australia has now reviewed the names and irrespective of how they are intended to be pronounced is working with the Owner for the names of the horses to be changed before they next race," Forman told 7News.

There are more than 12,000 name applications ever year in Australia and the governing body has a strict policy on what you can and can't use to name a horse.

The policy states 'Racing Australia may refuse to register any horse name it deems undesirable, for any reason' and that it can 'cancel any horse's registered name for any reason it thinks fit'.

A horse can't have a name that is longer than 18 characters, including spaces and apostrophes. Racing Australia won't allow punctuation marks other than apostrophes and names can be rejected if they are 'difficult to pronounce or read'.

They will also reject applications where the meaning or origin of the name 'cannot be satisfactorily substantiated'.

Topics: Australia

Stewart Perrie

Stewart Perrie is a Trending Journalist at LADbible. His first job was as a newsreader and journalist at the award winning Sydney radio station, Macquarie Radio. He was solely responsible for the content broadcast on multiple stations across Australia when the MH17, Germanwings and AirAsia disasters unfolded. Stewart has covered the conflict in Syria for LADbible, interviewing a doctor on the front line, and has contributed to the hugely successful UOKM8 campaign.

@stewartperrie