Quote:
Originally Posted by mountainman
Lots of mnr's eyes didn't work during the time I subbed in as operator. This necessitated catching the fraction manually and if the angle was bad, using (sometimes distant) landmarks for orientation.
That old smokestack across the river sure came in handy for half-mile splits at 5 1/2 furlongs. I could get serious and profer my theories on how poor angles from the drf vantage point distorts margins at certain points of call, but I haven't so much as glanced at this evening's pp's, and it's already 1:30.
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One of the things I've fought hard for is that tracks need to tell people when races, or parts of races, aren't timed electronically. There is a field now in every chart labeled "Timer" and it is finally being used. Hand timing is woefully bad no matter how good someone thinks they are at it. This isn't a knock on anyone doing the timing, it is an impossible job to do accurately.
There are a few tracks out there that haven't had electronic timing for a very long time, but the public was never told. Now every race at these tracks is listed as "Hand" in the "Timer" field.
