Why does horse racing use 1/5 seconds?

[clocker7]

Originally Posted by Overlay

I would say that it traces back to 1/5 of a second being considered the same as one length of distance.

Not 100% sure, but your are probably correct. In earlier years, the splits were in 1/4 of a second because of the timing technology of the times.

[BettinBilly]

It's because US Teletimer Corp could not manufacture clocks accurate enough to 1/10th of a second, so they settled on 1/5ths. Hey, it was good enough back in the day.

Kidding.

Well, as I posted early in this tread, I asked guys at the track in the mid 80's and they immediately said because horses run an average of 5 lengths per second, so 1/5 = 1 length.

Since I believed them, if I find out that it is NOT true, I'll be disappointed that I was the victim of a track myth all these years.

[Cratos]

According the Daily Racing Form official charts, the 25th Preakness which was run on May, 29, 1900 was timed in 1:38 2/5 seconds for the 1-1/16 distance at that time. Prior to that, the Preakness was timed in ¼ second increments.

In reviewing the American Teletimer website the following excerpt was found:

"Our U.S. registered trademark, Teletimer®, is synonymous with racetrack timing.

Teletimer® timing systems have the capability to accurately provide fractional and finish times (in 1/5ths, 1/10ths or 1/100ths of a second) for any distance race on dirt or turf tracks including an unlimited number of turf course lanes.

Times are and always have been accurately reported, not estimated nor produced. “

However there wasn’t any info about when American Teletimer first started timing horse races.

[Smarty Cide]

kinda think its time for a change... lets go to 1/10s

[Show Me the Wire]

May I offer another line of reasoning? If the average stride of race horses' is 20 feet and if race horses average 2 1/2 strides per second the average horse would cover 50 feet in one second. If the average length is 10 feet the average race horse would cover 5 lengths per second.

[Longshot6977]

I do not know why horse racing using 1/5 seconds, but I'd like to mention this. Who says a length is 8 feet or 10 or 12? Some horses are longer or shorter than others, and their strides are different lengths. I think it originated with the measurement of a Hand to measure a horse's height. I THINK it was Tom Brohamer's MPH book where I read the author mentioned 6 lengths per second was more accurate than 5 lengths per sec. A few authors actually mentioned that too. But that should be for a sprint. Maybe 4 or 5 lengths per second for a longer race or marathon.

But we need to do away with this archaic method and use something like feet per second or actual distance traveled for feet behind or ahead of the next horse. And if Secretariat won by 31 lengths, how much of a distance is that really. 310 feet? 248 feet?

[Horseplayersbet.com]

'Until the 1970s, for pace handicapping purposes, the time generally allotted by pace handicappers for a horse to run a length (approximately 11 feet) during the course of a race was long thought to be a fifth of a second. Andrew Beyer was the first to contest this in his 1975 book Picking Winners, stating that the time span of a beaten length (at the end of the race) varied by race distance, as horses would be traveling faster at the end of shorter distanced races than they would at longer ones.'
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Handicapping

The math. 660 feet in a furlong. Divide that by 11 (the distance to run 1 length) and you get 60. 60 lengths in a furlong, divide by 5 and you get 12 seconds (the estimated average time it takes for an average horse to run 1 furlong in a mid at a standard distance of 6 furlongs to a 1 mile.