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"Does anyone recall the Jack Logan column from the Sporting Life?"
I do. He struck me, even then, as a dreadful reactionary.
"Get the fixtures back"
Is there a snowball’s chance in Hell of achieving this, Joe? Surely, if the BHA dared say "you can’t race without our permission, and you won’t get that permission unless we take back ownership of the fixtures", the racecourses would laugh their way to the High Court, ECJ, or whatever?
Still, the BHA has a Race Planning Department, so they can
pretend
they own the fixtures.
You are Racing CEO for a Day.
What three things would you change for 2015?
Prize money? Admission Prices? Bookmaker’s Terms and Conditions for taking a Bet? Race Planning? Stewarding? The Gravy Train Love In?
Anything……?
Racing CEO is powerless to change some of those.
Racing and betting is/can be attractive to a wide range of individuals. However, while some individuals have been well catered for in recent years (think boozed-up Saturdays and music nights), others have been neglected. One of the ways in which racing and betting can appeal is by presenting itself as an intriguing problem to crack (while those who wish to stick a pin in can still do that and enjoy the fun). In order to achieve that, it needs to take data issues far more seriously. That’s stuff like accurate going reports, accurate race distances, accurate times, robust SPs, and potentially new data sets, like sectional times, detailed on-the-spot weather reports and horse weights. If you read any books about sports analysis, or attend any conferences about sports analysis, racing simply does not get a look in. Where once it was the sport of choice in Britain for those intrigued by numbers (along with cricket, perhaps), it is now all but anonymous. The outsiders I speak to are baffled by the amateurish way in which data in horseracing is treated in what is the era of Big Data.
Greater efficiencies in the running of the sport. Time-saving automations and technologies, used elsewhere, still seem not to have made it to Head Office. Centralised stewarding, with a smaller representation on course largely concerned with communicating with the participants, would not only result in greater consistency and a higher level of expertise, it would save money. We have video-conferencing facilities, smart phones and instant messaging, yet some of what the sport does is reminiscent of the 1980s.
Racing needs to disentangle itself from the Faustian pact with bookmakers that is the current funding framework. I don’t know how that can be achieved, but if anyone wants to pay me a CEO’s salary I would give it a good shot. In the meantime, anyone in charge of racing should be distancing themselves from some of the special-pleading that keeps coming its way, from bookmakers and others, while tapping into the knowledge and expertise that is out there and does not have a voice. Small efforts were made in this area in 2014. More could be done. Special pleading has resulted in the absurd situation whereby some of the same people who seemingly failed to appreciate the consequences of a worldwide recession on horse populations are now complaining about small field sizes.
The truth is that there are few silver bullets, but many smaller initiatives could collectively make quite a big difference for the better.
Those are good and relevant questions.
I am not in a position, here and now, to answer the former. Bobs Worth would have to have run something like 2 furlongs quicker to have posted a 164 figure (all other inputs remaining the same), the precise amount depending on an individual’s time/pounds allowance under the prevailing conditions. That seems, erm, highly unlikely.
I certainly don’t see this as a "who knows their stuff" exercise: it appears to me that everyone on this thread does. But it is an illustration of the principle that, over and above a brain and some software, perhaps the most useful thing when dealing with stats/data is to possess a very large amount of scepticism.
I’ve got Kempton as bang on 24.0f, assuming a run-up (to 1st fence) of 145 yd.
The BHA has promised a wholesale remeasurement of jumps tracks, which is something to look forward to in 2015.
No, I wouldn’t, if the two distances were in reality the same. Two main topographical features affect standard times: bends and undulations. There’s probably not a lot in it on the former, given that Kempton’s circuit is ~12.85f and Leopardstown’s is ~14.92f, but Leopardstown is slightly more undulating.
As it is, while I previously surveyed Kempton’s "3m" as correct, Leopardstown’s would appear to be over, in this instance at least. So that would be a further reason to expect Leopardstown to have a slower standard time than Kempton at this distance.
Unfortunately, a lot of standard times seem to have been calculated in the belief that historical distances were both accurate and precise. They should have been, but they weren’t/aren’t.
I meant that if, say, Leopardstown 3m chases consistently produced timefigures which were different to what could be expected (bearing in mind that times are non-normally distributed and that the proportion of truly run races will vary under different circumstances) then the standard time used in the first place could be amended on the back of that knowledge.
The initial standard time does not even need to have been especially accurate, though the more accurate it is in the first place the fewer iterations should be necessary. It is a well-known scientific approach to tackling problems like this.
In among all this, it should never be forgotten that jumps distances are approximated to 110 yards in Britain (and that plenty of distances are suspect even allowing for this degree of tolerance), while the situation in Ireland could be even worse. Graded secs/furlong as a safety net will be compromised by any such inaccuracies.
As an e.g.an "about 16f" which is in fact 16.25f and run at 15 sec/f and an "about 17f" which is in fact 16.76f and run at 15.2 sec/f will come out as 15.23 sec/f and 14.99 sec/f respectively (i.e. the opposite to what might be expected) if the "about" distances are treated as if precise.
Of course it is possible for individual horses to run faster at longer distances than other horses at shorter. I understood the reference to be to normalised/standardised times.
Good post from Slowhand.
Getting reliable jumps standard times is a minefield due to inaccurate times and distances, and due to those distances often varying. This may be even truer in Ireland than in UK. It is not how it should be, but it is how it is.
A possible shortcut would be to take some existing standard times – however flaky – to identify consistent discrepancies and adjust accordingly, though you would still be taking some things on trust.
I made it very similar to Slowhand, though it is not so easy with the current Google Earth image taken at a time when the fences had been stripped out.
3282 yd for a circuit, 1928 yd from 7 out, run-up took 10.7s with average race speed of 16.4s/f gives me 24.33f or 3 miles and 220 feet. But it’s probably a fraction less due to slower speed in the run-up.
How confident are you in your standard times at Leopardstown?
Apologies for delay in replying: the site did not like my password while I was abroad.
I happen to think that an SP for other sports would be useful. When I consider a game between e.g. Man Utd and Spurs from 6 months ago I would like to know what the expectation of a win/draw/lose had been. Betting syndicates will be capturing this (and other pricing) information, for sure.
However, in terms of the immediate settling of bets, there is one very clear difference between horseracing and football, and that is price variance.
Horses can easily double or halve in odds, due to the uncertainty in establishing the initial price (and sometimes other –
– factors), whereas football teams do not. Anyone taking a price on a footballing outcome knows that that price will be close to the prevailing price at the off (with a very few exceptions).I wouldn’t say that punters "believe that having an SP is crucial to protect them from the big bookies". I suggest punters (on horseracing) believe that an SP is desirable, and they should be protected from the big bookies with that SP.
The evidence is that the SP is doing nothing of the sort, with the body in charge of it turning a blind eye. Quite a different thing.
SDR
Judged by ricky’s subsequent post, the tide is turning. I’ll have him picketing High Holborn demanding free sectionals for all by the end of the week.
Thanks, Joe.
I don’t see the SP as a no-win situation. The existing SP, and the FIFA-like management of it by the SPRC, is bringing the sport into disrepute. That can’t be in the best interests of anyone whose fortunes are tied closely to those of racing. Incidentally, while Betfair own Timeform, they have hardly ever tried to stick their oar in about such matters.
I am pleased to hear another recommendation of Nick Rust. I find it difficult to believe that he would be greatly in favour of the many causes I hold close, given his lack of comment on them before now, but I certainly intend to give him a fair crack of the whip.
Festive cheer.
SDR
The numbers people would maintain that they need some non-numbers people to feed off, and the non-numbers people would claim the opposite. It is a broad church (atheists also welcome).
I really shouldn’t, but I have this aversion to willful ignorance, so here goes.
Sectional times are NOT only of use after the event. If you have the intelligence and application to understand time analysis, you can project overall times – which it is possible to do after a race or two on a card as a result of sectionals – and the sectionals that should give rise to them.
So that you could, for instance, figure out after the first 2f of this year’s Winter Derby that the leaders were going too fast and lay one/some of those leaders or back something that was behind. Such as the winner, who was in last place after 300 yards.
Unfortunately, though, with a 10-second delay in transmission, that would leave you with only approximately 90 seconds of the race to go in which to engage brain and execute a bet. Could be tricky.
How many people do this? Not many at present, I suspect. But on-screen sectional times have only been with us on a regular basis for 6 weeks and could be described as in their infancy. Like any infant, they need a bit of TLC and understanding – as opposed to callous and sustained abuse – in order to thrive.
They would benefit greatly from the broadcasters concerned displaying benchmark sectionals along the way, so that those who wish to educate themselves about the subject can do just that, while those who do not wish to educate themselves about the subject will presumably continue to whinge about their screens being cluttered up with figures which they cannot be bothered to understand.
Benchmark sectionals would also, arguably, add to the appreciation of a race by those not inclined to bet in-running on the back of them. Last year’s Champion Hurdle and Cheltenham Gold Cup pace collapses were spectacular. Some people might like to have known what was happening at the time, backed up by hard facts, whether or not they struck a bet as a result.
There are valid reasons not to advocate sectionals – such as the cost of existing technology or the graft involved in generating your own – but that "live" (or even slightly delayed) sectionals have no worth is not one of them.
Courses are measured two-horse-widths off the inside rails on bends and down the middle of obstacles otherwise. Official jumps distances are approximated to the nearest 110 yards (no, really) and not amended after movements of rails/omissions of obstacles etc. That is on top of compelling evidence that some of the approximated distances are wrong anyway. It is a farce which the BHA really needs to get a grip of. IMO. Surveying courses on the day of racing to establish correct distances is both realistic and affordable in this day and age.
I don’t pretend to have all of the answers wrt jumps sectionals, partly because no-one has ever paid me to investigate them thoroughly. You can estimate the effect of amendments by using between-obstacle sectionals and Google Earth measurements, fwiw, providing you have laid that groundwork in advance.
In the case of the Gold Cup, what seems difficult to dispute is that the overall race time was underwhelming compared to the other race run at the same C&D on the same day and the finishing speed was higher compared to the overall time than customary.
Winners’ times from 3 out and overall:
Kauto Star (2009) 58.2s, 404.6s
Imperial Commander (2010) 59.1s, 402.9s
Long Run (2011) 56.5s, 388.6s
Synchronised (2012) 56.1s, 394.6s
Bobs Worth (2013) 64.4s, 422.2s
Lord Windermere (2014) 57.2s, 405.1sIt wasn’t possible to go into huge detail in a blog, with other races competing for attention, and I wanted to make the comparison between the Gold Cup and the Foxhunter so that there were no queries about rail movements between races. But here are the results of a similar exercise to the one I posted on Twitter about another race on the same day.
Averaging the by-obstacle times for the previous 5 leaders and 5 winners of the Gold Cup, then pro-rata adjusting the resulting figures to this year’s overall time gives the following margins back from an average leader and average winner for the leader and for Lord Windermere in this year’s race:
11th fence: Leader 4.5 lengths behind, winner 7.5 lengths behind
15th fence: Leader 4.5 lengths behind, winner 7 lengths behind
18th fence: Leader 6.5 lengths behind, winner 10 lengths behind
20th fence (3 out): Leader 4 lengths behind, winner 10 lengths behind
22nd (final) fence: Leader 4.5 lengths behind, winner 6.5 lengths behind
Level at line.They were actually slightly ahead of normal pace for the early fences but, as can be seen from the above, they had dropped behind by halfway and further behind approaching the closing stages before there was quite a quick finish (compared to the overall race time). Or at least in the context of the averages from the previous 5 runnings of the same race.
There is no evidence that the leaders went too soon (unlike the year before), if anything, the opposite, though in an ideal world we would have many more races in the sample and attempt to adjust for the rail movements etc mentioned.
To return to the subject, an interim goal might be to get some punter representation on the Betting Patterns Working Party, a body stuffed to the rafters with bookmaking types – some of them of questionable intellect – which has frequently banged the drum for bigger fixture lists among other things. There is no reason why only bookmakers should get a say in such matters, providing data confidentiality is observed. Indeed, it can be contended that what the BPWP, and racing, really needs are more independent minds capable of looking beyond their own narrow interests.
– factors), whereas football teams do not. Anyone taking a price on a footballing outcome knows that that price will be close to the prevailing price at the off (with a very few exceptions).