Irish lengths

[Gerald]

Hi, does anyone know how many Irish lengths (on the Flat) there are in a second?

[wallace-no7]

What do you mean…how many lengths does a horse cover in a second?

[Gerald]

What I was wanting to know was what the time equivalent of a length was.

I googled this in the last hour, and came across Prufrock’s betfair blog.

Apparently the times of beaten horses in Irish races are recorded. However, they ain’t on the results on the goracing site, so it looks like I might have to subscribe to the Irish Form Book.

[wallace-no7]

Could be tricky to find that.

Betfair Forum it in Irish Sports.

Their may be a few shrewd cookies their

[Gerald]

I was planning to convert the beaten lengths etc to times, but if I can get the times directly, that is the information I want.

[wallace-no7]

I suppose if you estimate the amount of lengths in 1f. Then it could be pretty simple. I am sure track to track differs especially from Soft to Firm

[Prufrock]

irishracing.com has individual horse times included in the result, e.g.:

http://www.irishracing.com/results/v5re … 211415.htm

[davidbrady]

wallace-no7

A length is not actually a measurement of distance, it is a measurement of time.

The amount by which a horse is beaten, although expressed in lengths (which would imply distance), is actually measured by the number of seconds that the horse is beaten by.

This time is then converted to lengths using a standard formula (eg – 5 lengths per second or some such equivalent)

I’m not sure if the formula changes from race distance to race distance or from NH to Flat but I do know that the formula changed depending on the going in recent years.

eg – if the going is good then a formula of, say 5 lgth per sec would be used but if the going is soft then a formula of 6 lgth per sec would be used.

Apologies if you already knew this.

[Prufrock]

The above applies to UK, not to Ireland. In Ireland they convert individual horse times to margins on an ad-hoc basis and with no fixed formula in place. Fortunately, unlike in UK, they publish the individual times as well, so we don’t have to guess or engineer this information.

[davidbrady]

Thanks for that clarification Prufrock

[Gerald]

Thanks Prufock.

I looked at that site yesterday, so I either overlooked the times, even though they were what I was looking for, or they added them later.

[robert99]

a

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