Clocking

[Thoroughbred Fan]

Originally Posted by justindew

The following passage is from a DRF article regarding Street Sense's last work at Churchill....

"Street Sense announced his readiness with a scary-good five-furlong work in 57.40 seconds on Thursday at Churchill Downs. Officially, Churchill clockers caught his last eighth of a mile in 10 seconds, though his connections realize that was probably incorrect.

Wilkes, who was at Churchill that morning, said he caught the final quarter of the move in 22.40 seconds with the last eighth in 11.20. Regardless, the work was an indication to Wilkes and the colt's regular jockey, Calvin Borel, of how well Street Sense is doing heading into the summer."

Here is my question: How hard would it be to create some kind of electronic tracking system for workouts, similar to the Trackus system at Keeneland, that would eliminate the guesswork in timing workouts? If anyone has an opinion on this, I would love to hear it.

The answer is that it would be really tough since not all workouts are intended to finish at the finish line. I know of a couple of trainers who often intend to work a horse 3 furlongs, but call it in as 5 furlongs and start and finish at odd poles to throw off the clocker. Then, he'll call and say "what did you get hm in?" And then they talk for a second and come up with a number, when the trainer knows damn well how fast the horse worked.

It would have to be one hell of an electronic system to have any value and you would need the same system at all tracks or it would be next to useless.