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[cj]

The first part of timing a race is finding one you can trust was correct. On turf, that involves matching the temporary rail setting, and hopefully run up too but that isn't necessary. The last race I could find to match was the 2020 G3 Red Smith Stakes. It was run on the same course (not the outer), 18 foot temp rail.

The run up was listed as 81 feet that day as compared to 240 today, but that 81 is way, way off. The time of the run up that day 6.38 seconds. I could still run 81 feet in that time I'm pretty sure. Looking at the replay, I'm confident the run up was the same for both of these races. It isn't like there are a lot of spots to bring the gate on the turf course. For these races, I'd guess the run up is really about 260 feet. This shouldn't be that hard to measure and know the distances, but that is what we get from the tracks.

Using that info, I was able to time the race and for the final time I get 2:13.93 for this race. That is exactly 3 seconds faster (that is a coincidence) than the posted time during the race. Just because the final time is off a certain amount doesn't mean the fractions which also be off the same amount, it depends on what the problem was. But in this case, it looks like it was just an early start and you can deduct 3.00 from each call for much better times.