cj discovers Santa Anita 5 1/2 on the turf races are shorter than 5 1/2 furlongs

[Suff]

Thinking tonight about all the sporting events where instant reply results in a second or even fractions of seconds be put back on the clock.

Todays consumer of sports is accustomed to precision.

[spiketoo]

cj, no disrespect intended and sorry if this evolves into a hijack here, but show me the numbers. In the 25 years I attended SA I never saw one. I'm not saying they didn't transpire.

In theory I kinda understand the uniqueness of the route could potentially be an issue where horses going down an incline transferring to and then from a different surface could be an issue. But I think its myopic to say since there was an unusual number of breakdowns on the main track and that may have played into the downhill route then we will eliminate the downhill route. Remember that they analysed the dirt ad museum and found no issues with the dirt. Chalked up to what horses are more frail, undetected bone issues, trainers juicing or what?

I get the optics are bad on any breakdown and visually looked worse on that patch of downhill dirt. I just disagree with eliminating them in their entirety. It truly was the sole distance that made these races, and SA unique.

[Spalding No!]

Originally Posted by spiketoo

cj, no disrespect intended and sorry if this evolves into a hijack here, but show me the numbers. In the 25 years I attended SA I never saw one. I'm not saying they didn't transpire.

In the stats listed on the attachment, for 8 out of the 11 years reported, the downhill turf course had a higher fatality rate than the main track or the turf course proper.

However, that doesn't mean that the breakdowns were taking place exclusively at the dirt crossing. Furthermore, fatal injuries are only one type of negative outcome. It would be interesting to see what the overall injury rate--one that included non-catastrophic injuries--is amongst the different courses. Perhaps a different picture would develop. In theory it would be harder to pull an injured horse up on the downhill then it would be on the flat (thereby resulting in more fatalities v. non-fatal injuries).

In addition, horses don't train on the turf course (downhill or otherwise); they train on the main track, training track, or off-site at another facility.

http://jockeyclub.com/pdfs/eid/SantaAnita.pdf

[jay68802]

Here's the thing. I, as a horseplayer, wonder why, timing a race from when the gate opens, till it ends, is so hard. The tracks at Gulfstream and Santa Anita, and for that matter, every other track in the world, have not moved. They are in the same f@cking place, day in and day out. Yep, on some turf courses, the rail moves. The finish line does not. it is in one, may be, two spots. What is so hard about this? It is a f@cking joke. No one, in this industry, has gave a reasonable explanation. Why is this so hard??

[dilanesp]

The sport is in no position to stick to traditions that may be aesthetically pleasing but seem to be causing horse deaths.

They had to switch to something other than 6 1/2 down the hill.

[Tom]

Originally Posted by cj

Andy Beyer wrote me this morning and he found some races where the 1/4 mile is only about 40 feet short, not 80. It took a little work, but my guess is that is how short these races are. What is happening is whoever turns on the Trakus system is supposed to do it when the gate is sprung, but they are pretty inconsistent with doing so.

This causes distance to be "lost" from the race. They still are short, but sometimes they are timed with no run up and 40 feet, short, other times with 40 feet of run up and 80 feet short, and all sorts of combinations in between.

This causes wild variation in the fractional and final times and makes them completely unreliable. Unless you take the time to video time the races like I do, they cannot be reliably compared to each other even if run on the same day.

OMG! Seriously?
They have an alleged sophisticated electronic timing system that relies a human being initiating the start visually?

Not sure whether to or

But they should certainly should be

[dilanesp]

Originally Posted by jay68802

Here's the thing. I, as a horseplayer, wonder why, timing a race from when the gate opens, till it ends, is so hard. The tracks at Gulfstream and Santa Anita, and for that matter, every other track in the world, have not moved. They are in the same f@cking place, day in and day out. Yep, on some turf courses, the rail moves. The finish line does not. it is in one, may be, two spots. What is so hard about this? It is a f@cking joke. No one, in this industry, has gave a reasonable explanation. Why is this so hard??

The rail moves a lot, and you can't always position the gate differently. That means moving the rail changes the run-up.

[jay68802]

Originally Posted by dilanesp

The rail moves a lot, and you can't always position the gate differently. That means moving the rail changes the run-up.

In other words, simple math can solve it.

[cj]

Originally Posted by Tom

OMG! Seriously?
They have an alleged sophisticated electronic timing system that relies a human being initiating the start visually?

Not sure whether to or

But they should certainly should be

This is true. It is a big part of Trakus problems. In addition to not being very precise to begin with, an added element of a human pressing a button makes it even worse.

[Tom]

Originally Posted by jay68802

In other words, simple math can solve it.

Should be fixed soon, then because they have simpletons working on it!

[Jeff P]

So Trakus timing systems are designed so that a person other than the starter manually pushes a separate button to activate race timing?

How in the hell did anybody in track management think this was ok? Not just at the very first track that approved Trakus as their official race timing vendor? But at one track after another after another like dominoes. (Ugh.)

Ok.

Given that's how Trakus timing systems are designed to operate, has anybody at Trakus or anybody in the industry thought to implement something like the following?

Fyi, there is a human being called the starter who presses a button that releases the latches holding the stall doors of the starting gate in a closed position. Once those latches release: The stall doors pop open.

Why can't Trakus timing systems have sensors located in each set of stall doors? Why can't those sensors (collectively) activate race timing at the (mean or median) point in time when all or most of the stall doors have opened past a certain point?

Imo, implementing something like that could go a long way towards eliminating the human error factor built into Trakus timing systems.


-jp

.

[Jeff P]

Originally Posted by jay68802

Here's the thing. I, as a horseplayer, wonder why, timing a race from when the gate opens, till it ends, is so hard. The tracks at Gulfstream and Santa Anita, and for that matter, every other track in the world, have not moved. They are in the same f@cking place, day in and day out. Yep, on some turf courses, the rail moves. The finish line does not. it is in one, may be, two spots. What is so hard about this? It is a f@cking joke. No one, in this industry, has gave a reasonable explanation. Why is this so hard??

Imo, EVERYBODY getting a paycheck in this industry should be reading the above quoted post and asking each other the very same question:

Why is timing a race from gate open to the finish line so hard?

If you need various runup positions so as to evenly distribute wear and tear on the course caused by the starting gate: So be it.

TIME THE RUNUP. Include runup times and distances as part of the official race data.

Reporting what actually happened during a race (runup time) should be one of your key objectives.

Stop pretending runup times are not part of the race.


-jp

.

[jay68802]

But ist is so easy to do. No offense Tom.

[Southbaygent]

Originally Posted by spiketoo

Sheesh just go back to 'about 6.5f' down the hill! I abhor 5.5.

And don't sass me about the dirt crossover. They run 10f where they have to engage the crossover and I haven't seen any fall over and go boom.

👍🏻👍🏻

[castaway01]

Originally Posted by spiketoo

Sheesh just go back to 'about 6.5f' down the hill! I abhor 5.5.

And don't sass me about the dirt crossover. They run 10f where they have to engage the crossover and I haven't seen any fall over and go boom.

Because there are more breakdowns at that distance and the track has had some mild, barely noticeable issues with breakdowns?

Use some common sense.