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Interesting article in The Weekender regarding race distances.
Does anyone care if say :- a 2 mile 4 furlong hurdle race is actually run over anything between 2 miles 4 furlongs 110 yards and 2miles 3 furlongs 110 yards ?
And the time is B******s because the distance is wrong ?
Or the stated ground condition is incorrect ?
Paddy Power knocked back my £0.37 bet.
I care, oh yes I do.
More than anything, I care that it may be 2m 3f 176 yards one day and 2m 4f 55 yards another, for exactly the same race advertised as 2m 4f. Given that no-one actually measures distances on race days then it could well be that the variance is outside the boundaries allowed for.
It should be obligatory that racecourses measure distances and post any alterations both before and after the race.
I also care, very much.It is hard to see how any meaningful speed figures can ever be calculated while this situation exists.And the infuriating thing is that measuring distances as Prufrock has suggested would be neither expensive or greatly inconvenient.
it means a hell of a lot to me, i take note of winners at small tracks who put up high speed ratings but its hardly a suprise they clock fast times if they are running over 110 or so yards less,chipmunk
Presumably, and please correct me if I am wrong, the race distance is calculated as the shortest route from the start to the finish. Do you then, in creating speed figures, make adjustments for those forced to run wide around a turn as they will inevitably have covered a greater distance than those on the rail.
If not, are your figures (ultimately) just as pointless as those created using an incorrect distance?
It should be obligatory that racecourses measure distances and post any alterations both before and after the race.
I seem to remember a push by some paper we used to work for to attain such information from the courses, working on the assumption that the courses in question would have decided on how much to let in or out railings, bends, etc early enough for us to go to print with the details. The response from the courses we approached was pretty mute.
gc
Jeremy Grayson. Son of immigrant. Adoptive father of two. Metadata librarian. Freelance point-to-point / horse racing writer, analyst and commentator wonk. Loves music, buses, cats, the BBC Micro, ale. Advocate of CBT, PACE and therapeutic parenting. Aspergers.
Do you then, in creating speed figures, make adjustments for those forced to run wide around a turn as they will inevitably have covered a greater distance than those on the rail.
Yes. Though I sometimes wonder if it’s worth it when the ground on the inside is often chewed up more than out wider. And don’t even get me started on centrifugal forces…
As long as horseracing is underpinned by bookmakers and owners who have to gamble to pay the bills accurate information on going, distances etc..will always be in short supply. Which is why the average punter is turning to other sports these days.
I think there was a JC/BHB(?) push in 1991 or thereabouts to get accurate race distance at all UK courses. From memory, 60% measured substantially differently from the advertised distance and, in one case, it was out by 0.5 miles.
in one case, it was out by 0.5 miles.
There are a few point-to-point courses I could name where it still is….
gc
Jeremy Grayson. Son of immigrant. Adoptive father of two. Metadata librarian. Freelance point-to-point / horse racing writer, analyst and commentator wonk. Loves music, buses, cats, the BBC Micro, ale. Advocate of CBT, PACE and therapeutic parenting. Aspergers.
The "about" race distance rule seems to have disappeared from the current BHA rules of racing and is replaced by Rule 80(ii)e which states
"The Managing Executive (racecourse)
shall be responsible for the condition of the course and fences and for ensuring that the course is properly measured and marked and also for ensuring that the course is fit for racing to take place on a raceday unless circumstances prevail which are wholly outside the control of the Managing Executive or that of its employees, servants and agents; "Properly measured should mean properly measured which rules out such estimates and guesses.
Thanks for that info Robert.
Is this the only place in the current BHA rules where distance is mentioned ?
Any allowable tolerances ie +/- 10 yards ? If there is a low tolerance, every race with a bend could have an incorrect distance !
What do the rules say :- when this rule is breached ?
Don’t most handicap ratings ie Timeform, Raceform, OR, PRR, TS and Beyer use these result times ?
Paddy Power knocked back my £0.37 bet.
Anna Newton Smith’s horse Come Bye had up until yesterday never won a 2 mile race so was this the reason her jockey Felix De Giles raced his horse around the outside of the track giving away around at least furlong to his rivals?
No of course not he done it to find the better ground.Around 99% of runners at Brighton race right up the stands rail when the ground is soft again they would be giving ground to horses that race the most direct route which is the far side.
Willie Carson often used to put his horses right on the outside racing under the trees going down the far side at Ascot again giving away vital distances but he won many races under wet conditions by taking that longer route.
The best example this season of giving away ground and still winning is of course Ryan Moore in the Eclipse at Sandown on Notnowcato but overall was it such a suprise as on the previous day (6th July) 3 of the winners all gave away ground to race on the stand side. John Francome was adamant that the stand side was still the best ground and Ryan Moore told Sir Michael Stoute he thought the bushes near the stand side would draw in a certain amount of water and the place to be was on the stands side whilst all his rivals decided to go the shortest way and keep to the far side.
I always concentrate on what horses are likely to perform on different surfaces than will one stay an extra few metres or not.
Getting back to Come Byes race yesterday at Plumpton on all known form Gary Moores horse Amnesty does not perform on soft ground and that fact was proved correct again. If Amnesty had raced a furlong shorter than the others it would still not have won.
If Amnesty had raced a furlong shorter than the others it would still not have won.
He was beaten approximately 56 lengths, which is some way short of a furlong, so I would have to disagree.
Thanks for that info Robert.
Is this the only place in the current BHA rules where distance is mentioned ?
Any allowable tolerances ie +/- 10 yards ? If there is a low tolerance, every race with a bend could have an incorrect distance !
What do the rules say :- when this rule is breached ?
Don’t most handicap ratings ie Timeform, Raceform, OR, PRR, TS and Beyer use these result times ?
Q,
Using the search facility it did not find any results for "distance".
If courses were properly measured, then a tolerance would need to be set but it seems these rules are just another set of papers to cover the indifference of these supposed rulers of the sport. There are hundreds of often quite petty penalties for jockeys, trainers, valets etc but very little at all for officials.Timeform uses race times in handicapping and the others will use times in speed rating. Computerised speed ratings may just spew out garbage results without some manual intervention when courses have been altered.
The rating problem is not so much that the course distances are wrong it is more that they can vary wildly from meeting to meeting. Anyone watching racing knows that jockeys attempt to find the best course and ground to finish fastest but that can be taken into account if there is some constant fixed reference value such as the distance from start to finish.
Prufrock
Thanks for your reply but u seemed not to notice that that correct ground is so much more relevant than the distance travelled and times of any race.
who care a f*** what horse gives away distance its all about what can travel on firm or soft ground!
It always has been and always will be!Why was Gary Moores horse joint fav then ?
56 lenghts is in my mind a well beaten animal
how much is 56 lenghts when a horse is going backwards?
It could never have won on that ground
form book told you that!pick a fault with the other examples given then
rgds
Come Bye ran 16 furlongs in 258.46 secs, Amnesty ran the same distance in approx 272.46 secs. On a pro-rata basis, Amnesty ran 15 furlongs in about 255.46 seconds.
In other words, Amnesty would have completed 15 furlongs about 3 seconds sooner than Come Bye ran 16 furlongs. The reality is that Amnesty probably would have completed further ahead of that due to the nature of Plumpton’s finish.
That is on heavy ground and when the horse was patently a long way below its best form. I can run 100 metres faster than Seb Coe could run 800 metres. It doesn’t mean I am any good at running 100 metres.
However, as you have not grasped that fact already but have compounded your earlier error and thrown in irrelevancies for good measure then I don’t expect you to grasp it now.
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