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To be fair ruk was still tons better than ch4 who once again went out of their way not to show the horses pre-race,also I do wish the media would stop banging on about the open meeting being the start of the main jumping season…. Have they forgotten about the old roan,Charlie hall,united house and the haldon gold cup?
also I do wish the media would stop banging on about the open meeting being the start of the main jumping season…. Have they forgotten about the old roan,Charlie hall,united house and the haldon gold cup?
I’d go further than that – I don’t appreciate the way that the clutch of Listed races during the British summer jumping months (to say nothing of those you could add in Ireland) aren’t evidently regarded as part of the same season by some of the media’s lazier factions.
It’s a bit of an insult to the efforts of the likes of Market Rasen, Newton Abbot and Galway to keep striving for better (an effort which in particular in the case of Rasen results in maximum field sizes of late-120s to high 140s rated animals for its chases).
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.
I suppose it isn’t that bad if you have a television set the size of a large wall? Sectional times – a useful tool or something for Willo and his disciples to bore the pants off you? I can’t remember ever wasting any energy looking at the time of a race let alone sectional time and surprisingly I can still make a regular profit. Everyone only has a certain amount of time to devote to picking winners and that time can be better used on other much more important factors. Your eyes should tell you pretty much all you need to know about how a race is run. The fact that the chief advocate for sectional times is arguably the poorest tipster in the media is hardly a glowing endorsement is it?
Speaking as someone interested in
sectional times/pace
, it isn’t for everyone and surely infuriates more than helps, especially over jumps. Agreed, your eyes should tell you a lot, but it could easily be done without blocking a part of the screen. Furlong/jump by jump tells me little anyway. Only really needs quarter race time checks in the bottom corner of the screen with may be a comparrison made to Racing Post Stndard Times/expected times judged by ground conditions.
However, the fewer punters using sectionals/pace – suits me.
Value Is EverythingEven the hurdle races at Saratoga – a perfectly flat and oval course with standardized fences – don’t have fractional times ’cause they’re useless for handicapping jumpers.
Speaking as someone interested in
sectional times/pace
, it isn’t for everyone and surely infuriates more than helps, especially over jumps. Agreed, your eyes should tell you a lot, but it could easily be done without blocking a part of the screen. Furlong/jump by jump tells me little anyway. Only really needs quarter race time checks in the bottom corner of the screen with may be a comparrison made to Racing Post Stndard Times/expected times judged by ground conditions.
However, the fewer punters using sectionals/pace – suits me.
Didn’t know you bet in running Gingertipster? However you’re welcome to sectional times during a jumps race, just get them off my screen when I’m trying to watch a horse race. Don’t hurdles get moved at jumps tracks?
It’s hard to believe there are people who think sectional times are of interest to their viewers when they block out some of the screen and horses. Maybe they get paid for showing them.
The sectional times were that interesting that there was not one ounce of reference or analysis of them by either the course commentator or the assorted presenters and pundits on RUK.
I wondered what they were at first as there was no reference to them or to what they were compared with.
I can understand them in flat races and find them informative but not like they were done at the weekend
Don’t hurdles get moved at jumps tracks?
Yup – you don’t see the final two flights in the straight at Market Rasen in the self same positions for too many consecutive meetings.
Sectionals for chases at courses with portable fences wouldn’t be the easiest to pin down, either. I’d be thinking in particular of the multiple configurations which Southwell uses for its larger obstacles as the season progresses – blurred again in recent times since its previous notion of a separate summer and winter configuration doesn’t seem to have been upheld.
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.
Anyone doing sectionals seriously over jumps (and they do exist) should be orientating those sectionals by fixed features (nearby fences, gaps in rails, paths etc), thus meaning that movements can, usually, be adjusted for.
Incidentally, TurfTrax’s sectionals were fixed across the three days, so on day two they did not correspond precisely to where the flights were (which had been the case on day one). Sadly, TurfTrax only occasionally give precise measurements of where their jumps sectionals are placed.
On Flat and jumps, sectionals are a nice to have imo, rather than anything of consistently practical use as a betting tool. They make for great talking points – Frankel covers the 6th furling at Ascot quicker than any runner for any furlong of the King’s Stand.
But how can you use them with confidence in betting, because you don’t know how a race will be run? Perhaps they are useful for in-running players who can make informed bets off a very fast or very slow pace. But even with knowledge of a horse’s normal style – prominent, held up, whatever, you still cannot say with any degree of confidence that a race will be run at a certain pace.
I’m open to persuasion, as I might well be missing something. I did try to have the debate on twitter with Simon Rowlands once (a man I like and admire), but he broke off in frustration telling me ‘you just don’t get it, do you?’ I didn’t, and still don’t, but am always happy to learn.
The main things with sectionals are that, used in conjunction with other analytical tools, they enable you to assess the abilities of horses (much) better than the alternatives, and they enable you to interpret the run of the race – which horses were well placed, which horses showed speed or stamina etc – with an accuracy that is not possible with the naked eye.
The former is down to simple physics/bioenergetics: if a horse (human, dog or whatever) goes too fast or too slow early it will pay for this and its overall time will suffer. If you can allow for the difference between running optimally and how the horse actually ran, or at least approximate that in a useful way, you will have highly valuable information. That allowance/approximation is, obviously, the difficult bit. But you don’t have to land it on the head of a pin, just be better informed than others.
No, you don’t know for sure how a race will be run in the future (though sectionals/positional figures etc do help in this being not just a blind guess) but that would not invalidate the edge that "knowing" a horse is a 105 horse when the rest of the world thinks it is a 100 horse gives you.
Betting is a test in working with incomplete information – always will be, and we should be perfectly comfortable with that – but that does not mean it is sensible to snub useful information when it exists or could be sourced. As said elsewhere, however, I am very glad some/many people do!
One way of looking at it SC is that sectionals can indicate the presence of ability that may be hidden if you look at a race from either a collateral form, visual impression or overall time perspective. It’s value IMO lies in the fact that not many are analysing in this way so may be an edge, for now, for those prepared to work it all out themselves.
Thanks Prufrock and David; I now get it! No wonder Simon was frustrated with me.
I take it then that even with sectionals at every track, there would still be a fair amount of analysis to do in analysing those sectionals for each runner to see which was breaking through that ‘normal, barrier and at what point in the race?
The other thing that throws me a bit with sectionals – and perhaps it is so inconsequential as to be irrelevant – what if the best figures are being produced at points in the race that cannot be measured? For example -if there were half-furlong poles in every race – could the horses be running their best furlong sectionals in the furlong(s) between the half-furlong poles? You could go to extremes with that, I know and have poles every ten metres, but I’d be interested in your take on this.
Thanks
JoeIt seems several people have either missed the point or have chosen to miss the point. Whether you wanted them or not these figures cluttered up the screen and obscured the action. That should not be acceptable under any circumstances.
As for how much interest there is on sectionals this is a specific racing forum but still there were only a handful of questions on the Q & A thread.
"Missing information" is not inconsequential or irrelevant but is part and parcel of betting on uncertain events with incomplete information, which is what we do in each and every race we tackle. Taking one sectional can miss important information (though that one sectional is carefully chosen to be likely to contain as much information as possible) but it is a big improvement on taking no sectional.
Stilvi’s contribution is a reminder of the side of forums that i do not care for. The figures "cluttered up the screen and obscured the action", not in their opinion but as a matter of indisputable fact. Presumably the "question" should never have been asked, but once asked should have been ignored. Some of the rest of us are "missing the point" by allowing the initial question to develop into a wider discussion. If the Q&A referred to was mine, there were not much more than a handful of questions anyway, and more of them were about sectionals than about the supposed subject of the Q&A!
Thanks again, Prufrock. Did I read somewhere that behind that name is Mr Rowlands himself? If so, I hope all is well with you.
On adversarial forumites, one of the reasons I stopped posting on Betfair forums after about 3 years and many posts, was because of the level of abuse – not aimed at me, but at others.
I find TRF a haven in comparison. There is the odd grump, but after the scorched earth trolling on Betfair (perhaps it’s improved), this is a garden of delight . . . imo. of course!
Yes: Prufrock is – has always been – Simon Rowlands. Please forgive my schizoid behaviour in occasionally acting as if it was otherwise: it has enabled me to have an argument with myself when others would not oblige.
Just a line to explain why the commentator can’t include them.
At present with the exception of Channel 4 the times are only available to the commentator via our monitor on a delayed feed as they are put on by RUK rather than being available on a live on course feed.
Clearly it is not a good idea to call off a feed that is not live but delayed by a few seconds however much we would like to include some sectional times in the call !
Hope that makes sense.
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