Yonkers new 555' stretch Friday
 

http://xwebapp.ustrotting.com/absolu...293&zoneid=113

Should help early speed/front runners, right?

Back in its heyday, the stretch was even shorter. If memory serves me, it was 440' back then. It was the shortest stretch in the game while Roosevelt had the longest stretch. Yes, speed was king back then, especially since there was no passing lane.

Logic seems to dictate that drivers will have to start their move earlier if they want to win. However, George Sholty, arguably the best in the game back then, never moved on the last turn. He always waited until the straightaway and he could sure make those babies fly down the stretch.

I think the change has more to do with bettors complaining about the camera angle. For some reason, with the current configuration, the camera was passed the finish line making it seem the inside horses were further ahead at the wire than they actually were.

There must have been some kind of blockage so that the camera could not be exactly on the current finish line.

It appears that since the run to the 1st turn is 105 feet longer, the outside posts may have a better shot to even things out slightly. Does this make sense Ray? Maybe you can run some numbers after a few weeks to see if post stats changed.

Good point, longshot. I'll keep track of post position wins.

Just for fun here's the Robot's prediction of speed in tonight's 12 races.
If the horse's name is shown then that's the bots pick to win.

Actually, the run to the first turn may not be longer. While the clock starts at the start/finish line on the half mile track, the race actually starts when the car pulls away.

I randomly selected the first race on 5/28 to view the race and the car pulled away a full 7 seconds before the start of the race. This has been commonplace at Yonkers since they put the finish line at the end of the stretch.

I randomly checked the 8th race on 6/9 at the Meadowlands and the gate pulled away a fraction of a second before the start. Now you understand why horses may go faster at smaller tracks than at the Meadowlands.

Of course, the longer the run to the start, the faster the horses are going at the start, making for faster races. Unfortunately, there are no statistics on speed of the horse at the start, as WHEN the car pulls away is a variable and inconsistent at ALL tracks.

One thing for sure, the car will not be able to pull away nearly as early at Yonkers with the new configuration, because to do 7 seconds, the car would have to accelerate in the turn. Not gonna happen.

Hey Jess

I wonder if any track really holds to these rules.

http://www.ustrotting.com/pdf/USTARuleBook.pdf
page 49

11 MPH, then 18 MPH then pedal to the metal.....:D

And right under that on page 50 section 16.04 it says "Starting Point.—The starting point will be appropriately marked
a distance of not less than two hundred feet from the first turn. The starter shall give the word “go” at the starting point."

Looks to be much less than 200 feet from the turn even with the new setup. And the old setup was 105 closer as if to start right on the beginning of the turn. Go figure.

*bot had 6 of 12 leaders at half but 5 of them quit in stretch

Yes, the video at the finish line was a joke.

One of the problems that Yonkers has had, with the long stretch, was that the first quarters were slow. That was not the case last night with the shorter stretch. I'm not sure what the actual difference is in the start, but it looks longer, and the first quarters were fast last night. This helps because slow first quarters are really bad for racing.

Drivers Bartlett and Brennan were interviewed for an in house video earlier in the week and they indicated that it would be easier for horses to leave the gate with the new configuration, so the distance from the start to the first turn has to be longer that it was.

So I was live on track this afternoon. Very curious how they were going to set up the camera system. Turns out they mounted a small camera at the very top of the light post that was already in place. Someone from he TV control room likely moves it back and forth. Looks good on TV, you can actually tell close finishes now.

They didn't move the announcers booth or anything else in that area so the announcer will have trouble calling close finishes unless he uses the TV monitor instead. But it is much better now that they got this done.

My father didn't care for the shorter stretch as he didn't think horses from the back were moving early enough to get in proper contention.

Still a bit soon to be significant but the outside horses (6-7-8) are winning more.

And strangely enough the 2 post has been hot.
. 1000 race base is 1/1/17 thru 6/15/17

Thanks Ray:ThmbUp:

New stretch length has made no significant difference in Post Win%
Posts 2 and 3 are down a bit, outside posts up a bit.