timing problems | Horse Racing Free Tips

Del Mar Adjusts Some Starting Gate, Turf Rail Positions After Surveying Turf Course

With the objective of improving the accuracy of tracking and timing data, officials at Del Mar have re-surveyed the track’s turf course with a GPS system that will be in use beginning with the start of the Bing Crosby Meet Oct. 31. In August, the track acknowledged a rash of timing inconsistencies and reported that turf races would be hand timed over the last two weeks of the summer meeting.

In conjunction with Equibase and its timing partner Gmax, Del Mar has re-surveyed its seven-furlong turf oval for the different race distances run over it. The survey included both distances of the races and run-up distances from where the starting gate is positioned to the point where the timing mechanism is triggered.

Accordingly, track officials have modified several starting gate and turf rail positions. The results of the survey also helped Del Mar to correct some historic variations in how distances (measured from the finish line back) were calculated. As a result, adjustments have been made to the position of the poles on the turf course.

“The integrity of timing data is critical and we know we have to get this right,” said Del Mar’s President and Chief Operating Officer Josh Rubinstein. “We believe the adjustments made as a result of the survey, while relatively minor, combined with Gmax’s GPS technology, will provide for more accurate and consistent timing.”

Del Mar conducts grass racing at six different distances-five furlongs, one mile, 1 1/16 miles, 1 1/8 miles, 1 3/8 miles and 1 1/2 miles. The turf course has five rail adjustments for its races– zero, 12 feet, 18 feet, 24 feet and 30 feet. Approximately 40% of the track’s races are run on its turf course. Rail adjustments and run-ups are necessary for both safety and fairness, helping to preserve the consistency of the turf course. Track officials noted that in some cases, due to the gate positions, the run-up to where the timing begins may be slightly longer than it was in the past, which could result in slightly faster times.

The Bing Crosby Meet runs through Nov. 29.

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Acknowledging ‘Inconsistencies’ in New Timing System, Equibase Says Del Mar Turf Races Will Be Hand Timed for Rest of Meet

In response to reports of inaccurate times being produced for Del Mar turf races by its new Gmax GPS timing system, Equibase said in a statement Thursday that Del Mar will hand time its turf races for the rest of the meet. The statement also admitted the company found “inconsistencies” in the Gmax timing of Del Mar turf races that it will work to fix before the fall meet at the seaside oval.

“Del Mar racetrack will be utilizing hand timing for turf races for the remainder of the summer meet,” the statement read. “The times produced by the Equibase GPS System for dirt races have proven to be highly accurate and will continue to be provided. Last week, we discovered some inconsistencies with respect to the GPS survey and our historical survey relating to the turf course that we will work to rectify before Del Mar’s November meet. The GPS system will continue to provide the full running order for all types of races.”

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TIF’s Cummings Takes on Issue of Timing Problems

One day after Bill Finley wrote about inconsistencies in timing at a handful of racetracks in the U.S.–both big and small–in Wednesday’s TDN, Pat Cummings, the Executive Director of the Thoroughbred Idea Foundation, has penned a piece of his own, explaining why accuracy in timing is paramount to the game and offering a framework for how to move forward.

“The state of race timing in America is not improving as the years pass. It is getting worse,” writes Cummings, who served as the director of racing information for Trakus for the better part of four years from November 2011 through June 2015.

As the result of a deal between Equibase and the British-based Total Performance Data (TPD), races at a total of 11 American racetracks now rely on a GPS-based system known as Gmax. The system debuted in the U.S. in 2017 and is being used for this first time this summer at Del Mar. But as Finley and Cummings each point out, Gmax has been so unreliable as to force figure makers in this country to rely not on reported times, but on their own hand-timing of races.

“We have discovered that the final times, which is really all you are concerned with when making speed figures, from these tracks are not accurate enough at Gmax tracks to enable us to publish accurate speed figures,” noted Randy Moss, recognizable to most from his role as a racing commentator, but who has also been involved with making Beyer Speed Figures for Daily Racing Form for many years, in Finley’s story. “For the last month plus, we have been using our own times generated by video timing instead of the final times posted by the Gmax timer.”

Indeed, after finding that a handful of races from the Aug. 1 card at Del Mar–a program that also included the GI Bing Crosby S., a Breeders’ Cup Challenge race–TIF undertook an investigation of races at other tracks on the same day. Fully eight of the 11 live races at Woodbine Aug. 1 (as of the charts that existed Aug. 4) and two-thirds of Laurel Park’s nine races had different times on their live feeds compared to what the chart was reporting.

“An accurate time is a fundamental element of regulated horse races,” Cummings writes. “It has become clear that our sport has not evolved with more modern technology, but rather taken a technology, ignored whether it is at least as accurate as the technology it is replacing, and shoved a square peg into a round hole.

“Questioning Equibase’s GPS play is not being critical of all innovation and hoping to quash it, it is being critical of technological backpedaling which is being positioned as exactly the opposite.”

Click here to read the entire piece from Pat Cummings.

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