Chart question?
 

A horse crosses the finish line and is 5 lengths in front of the second horse. The horse that was second gets passed by one or more horses before he finishes. What would the chart show?

That the horse finished 3rd or 4th.

and got beat a nose for 2nd.

I think that Mike is asking how many lengths it would say the winner won by..

No, what I'm asking is how are the lengths behind the winner calculated? Using the teletimer?

I don't think Mike gave us enough information to answer that. I answered his question the best I could with the info given.

This is an interesting question. I'm going to fix a drink..or two and ponder it.

Spyder

Let's try this again...the winner crosses the finish line five in front of the next horse, who gets passed and finishes in third...two lengths behind the second place horse...How are the lengths behind figured?

Thank you. I've always wondered this. Or when a horse is quickly opening up on the runner-up. Is the horse an 8 length winner because he was clear 8 when he hit the wire, even if the horse behind him takes three and a half more seconds to hit the wire?

why wouldn't it say he won by 5 lengths?

he was 5 lengths ahead when he crossed the finish line. as the 2nd place horse crossed he was "x" ahead of the 3rd place horse. as the 3rd place horse crossed he was "x" in front of the 4th place horse.

doesn't time freezes as each hits the wire and the distance to the next horse is calculated?

it isn't that time froze when the winner x'd and the distances were then calculated all the way back to last place.

if a horse was in 2nd 5 lengths from the wire and then finished 2 lengths behind the 2nd place horse, he was vanned off after the race. he stopped running.

When I wrote charts at a greyhound park, the lengths behind the winner was calculated at the wire. If the winner won in 30.00 seconds, and the second place finisher finished in 30.14, he would be listed as 2 lengths behind (.07 seconds = one length). A runner that was 8th when the winner crossed, but passed two tiring rivals in the stretch after the winner crossed would be listed as 6th with his lengths behind calculated at the wire based upon his finishing time. So he/she could be 20 lengths behind the winner when the winner crosses the line, but make up some time late and be listed as 18 lengths behind.

I would think it is the same for thoroughbreds.

^
better answer

Greyhound chartwriters.. Is there anything they CAN'T do?

Kidding, mes.. Thanks for the clarification.

To take it another way...The chart says War Pass finished seventh, 23.25 lengths behind Big Truck in Tampa...who was probably having his picture taken when he finished. All the chart people can really say is how many lengths behind the sixth place horse he was...and then just calculate backwards from there???

There is a device called a teletimer that takes a photograph of a small sliver of the racetrack at the finish line hundreds of times a second. After all runners have finished, the photos are joined together to create the finishing photo. The result is an image that looks like this:



This is what they show you when there is a "photo for win, place, or show", however it is a very long photo that covers all runners in the race. Like this:



Every point in that picture is on the finish line. What you can then do is mouse over a specific point on the photo, such as a horse's nose, to move the finish line to that point, and it will tell you the exact time when that photo was taken. You can then calculate how much time the horse in question was behind the leader, and convert this time to lengths behind the winner.

They actually show that photo at EACH CALL over on the Hong Kong Jockey Club site.

1st time I'm EVER seeing one in US racing.

We wouldn't want to get too exact over here, would we; especially when our chartmakers are irrefragably accurate.

Yeah, the technology is there, and certainly beyond what we use now, I don't understand why we can't do it, at least at the major tracks. I'm sure horses have been mistakenly assigned 2 lengths off from where they really were at a point of call, which is huge if you're a pace handicapper relying on PP's. I think most chartwriters would love to have points of call done for them, more time to concentrate on the race and give accurate chart comments.

they had an article in the arkansas democrat gazette about the two people who do the charts for the races. pretty fascinating to be honest. one calls, the other writes in some kind of shorthand that they then go back and decipher.

While it is an interesting question, it's not like the other two are going to be seperated by any significant measure.