"About" distances

[gm10]

This follows on from a different thread where I mentioned that I couldn't get my Keeneland ratings right, and it turned out that there were two different 7F distances on the poly. The distinction between the two is made by the "About" flag in the data files of most providers.

I just had a quick look, and noticed that there are many "about" distances in my db. Fair Grounds for example has regular 8F races on the dirt, and "about" 8F races on the dirt.
Is this true? Is KEeneland 7F not a special case?

[BillW]

If your question is limited to dirt/synthetic I can't help - I don't have my database with me. But you may have missed the point re. turf with rails up. Tracks will try to compensate for the change in distance due to the rails but may not always be able to. So you will see both "about" distances and not when rails are up depending on the track and the distance of the race. In some cases tracks will have X furlong and about X furlong turf races depending on whether the rails are up or not. Example: Arlington Park 1 mile 1/8 on turf - with the rails out 42 feet it becomes "about 1 1/8". BUT Arlington park at 1 1/4 miles on turf with the rails out 62 feet the race is still "1 1/4" because they can move the gate to compensate for the distance change. But of course, for the sake of making variants both races will be different with the rails up regardless of whether they compensate for the distance change or not.

[Alan Wight]

Some tracks, such as Hollywood Park, also run some distances on the grass where a race can have either a chute or straightaway start. Equibase charts do not distinguish between the two.

[startngate]

Keeneland runs a traditional 7 furlong race, and also runs races designated as 'The Beard Course' which is 7 furlongs and 184 ft ... hence the 'about' flag you are seeing.

Fair Grounds has both one mile and one mile & 40 yards races. Not sure how they are designated in the data files, but that could be the reason.

Turf races at tracks where there are moveable rails will have 'about' distances whenever the rails are out from their 'zero' positions. The reason for this is not that the gate can be adjusted, but rather that the photo-electric timing cells can not. Even if the gate can be adjusted, unless you move the start timing beam, even the final time for the race would still be off.

The only way to get around this would be to have one set of cells for each rail position, or perhaps Trackus.

[gm10]

The "about" turf races I can live with. As far as I know, the rails will in the same position for the whole day, so the DTV will be able to capture most of the extra distance. The turf course will have an extremely high DTV on the day, but I don't mind this, for me the DTV is a correcting factor anyway, I don't give it much thought in my handicapping apart from that.

But my main problem is with "about distances" on the dirt. If you have two 8F races on the FG dirt and two "about 8F" races on the same day, the DTV will be wildly inaccurate, the 8F races may appear normal whereas the two "about 8F" races would then appear very slow. For the whole day the DTV will apear medium-slow, overestimating the first two races' speed ratings and underestimating the about 8F races' speed ratings.

How do you guys deal with this?

[Tom]

I've seen days where the rails are not the same all day - they move them for certain races of distances.