Ascot to modernise British racing by publishing timing data

Another effort at dragging horse racing towards the 21st century will be made by Ascot next month, when it starts publishing detailed timing data taken during races run at the Queen’s track. The news is the culmination of a two-year effort by Ascot in combination with Longines, one of its long-standing business partners, aimed at making the venue a showcase which other major tracks around the world will seek to emulate.

Racegoers and punters in other countries have long taken for granted a detailed breakdown of the times run by individual racehorses in each race but British racing has lagged behind and the subject has become a bone of contention. Advocates of sectional times, which record how long a horse took to run each furlong in a race, say they help to deepen understanding of why a race developed as it did and thereby stimulate interest, potentially leading to bigger TV audiences and improved betting turnover.

“I think it’s really exciting,” said Juliet Slot, Ascot’s commercial director, whose aim is to have furlong-by-furlong times being shown on screen during TV coverage of Ascot’s most prestigious race of the year, the King George VI & Queen Elizabeth Stakes, to be run at the end of next month. “It’ll provide us with a whole raft of data which hopefully we can share with our customers and other stakeholders in due course.

“Initially, it’s just showing the order and the sectional times for each furlong but we will have further data. What we want to do is start and then improve it.

“Longines want Ascot to be a showcase venue for the technology which then in due course will hopefully bring other racecourses from around the world to see how it works. We own the data and what we do with the data will depend on working with different partners as to how useful it will be. The obvious thing to look at is our betting partners and how they could use sectional timing. We want to get it live, get it working, see what the information is and then see what they think.”

Eventually, the data could be used to create a real-time visual representation of a race while it is in progress. The technology apparently exists but Ascot wants to consider how such a thing might best be presented and delivered.

The available data will eventually include the precise route taken by each horse in a race and the amount of ground it covered. The traditional heated debates about whether or not a particular horse was unlucky will at last have some solid evidence as an aid to discussion.

“Ascot’s initiative is welcome, if long overdue, though the care taken to get the technology right is to be commended,” said the form and time analyst Simon Rowlands, who has represented the interests of punters through the Horseracing Bettors Forum. “Sectional times have long been seen as crucial for analysis and understanding in other racing jurisdictions, and interest in them in Britain has increased greatly as a result of their existence at a small number of courses and through the efforts of racing enthusiasts.

“The ideal future would see free and readily available sectionals provided at all courses, live as well as after the event, and put properly into context. It is to be hoped that British racing more widely finally embraces this concept for the good of the sport.”