Simon Rowlands' Betting Masterclass: All you need to know about sectional timings

Simon Rowlands / Simon Rowlands / 24 August 2010 / 6 Comments

Harbinger romps to his King George win

"The absence of official sectionals in Britain is a considerable blow, but it does provide an opportunity for those prepared to put in the graft."

With no sectionals available on UK racing, this is an area where punters can get an edge on the betting public. Simon Rowlands explains how you do it

I have fielded a few enquiries about sectional timings of late so thought it would be a good idea to explain some of the processes and principles behind them.

Punters do not have official sectionals to refer to in Britain and Ireland, so have to take them by hand, which is a painstaking process and enough to discourage many who would otherwise take an interest. It has not always been so: TurfTrax provided electronically recorded sectionals at a selection of British racecourses before pulling the plug, for commercial reasons, in 2008.

Fortunately, enough data was published before this for some conclusions to be reached about how sectionals could best be used. The absence of official sectionals in Britain is a considerable blow, but it does provide an opportunity for those prepared to put in the graft.

On a fairly basic level, sectionals help us to understand the dynamics of a race and to gauge whether the pace of that race favoured horses ridden in a particular fashion. It is possible to estimate these things by eye, but only after acquiring considerable experience and never with the kind of accuracy for which we might hope. Sectionals put figures - clear and (usually) unambiguous - on such things.

So, what sectionals should we take and how should we take them?

First, you need a fixed point on a course at which times can be taken consistently and reasonably accurately. Over jumps, this means fences and hurdles (though be careful, as the location of hurdles on a course can change from one meeting to another), on the Flat this means paths or, ideally, furlong markers.

It is important to know that television pictures will enable this to happen. For instance, the camerawork on the all-weather at Lingfield means that it is best to take a sectional two furlongs from home, regardless of what race distance you are dealing with.

Life is too short to take several sectionals through a race, let alone to take them for each and every horse in that race. The TurfTrax experience indicated that the most important sectionals on the Flat - the ones which include the most important information about how a horse is running compared to optimum - are the final two furlongs in races up to and including a mile and the final three furlongs at beyond a mile.

Over jumps, I usually take a time from the third-last obstacle, and sometimes from the second-last if the time would otherwise greatly exceed a minute.

The next step is to take an accurate time for the leader at this sectional and for the leader (i.e. the winner) at the finishing line. Due to response delay (usually around 1/3 of a second from a standing start), it is best to take the time from the sectional to the finish, rather than from the start to the sectional.

This should be repeated until you are happy that you have taken the time accurately. Return this figure to 1/10 of a second, as it is unrealistic to expect greater accuracy than this.

You can convert this information to a finishing speed % which indicates how quickly or slowly the horses were ending the race, judged by the leaders at the start and the end of the sectional. The formula for this is as follows:
(T*d*100)/(t*D), where: T is the overall time in seconds; t is the sectional time in seconds; D is the overall distance; and d is the sectional distance.

For instance, if the leaders were to run the final three furlongs of a 12-furlong race in 37.4 sec, and the overall race time was 146.78 sec, the finishing speed (expressed as a percentage of the overall race speed) would be: (146.78*3*100)/(37.4*12) = 98.1%. This was the case in Harbinger's Betfair King George.

You need to establish what sort of figure is a "par" for a particular course and distance by looking at many examples, but this finishing speed % gives an intuitive figure in the first place and can be used as a simple way of trying to establish pace.

Of course, individual horses will run races in an individual manner that will be efficient or inefficient to a greater or lesser degree. The leaders could have gone too fast - as identified by the above process - but the winner might have run the race close to optimum.

Establishing sectionals for individual horses is a more laborious process but can shed a great deal more light on proceedings. More on that next week.

Comments (6)

1. Francis | 31 August 2010

   SIMON. UK racing should provide sectional times,it's just not good enough
   that this information is not officially available.
   Before your time,Hill Rise ran the fastest ever last quarter in The Kentucky Derby beaten a head by Northern Dancer.He was sent to Noel Murless and was allowed to start at 20/1 in his debut race at Ascot.£100 was a lot of money in 1967!
   2 furlongs to go is where the real pace of a race is,any horse not making an effort then is unlikely to be concerned in the finish.The final furlong is often not run as fast.A few years ago I asked Channel4 if they could put a running clock on races.They considered it,but it has not happened.

2. Darth | 02 September 2010

   Simon
   Thank you for another thought provoking article.
   Your 98.1% example for Harbinger is independent of going but in practice what effect does the range of going have on the expected pars? A held up horse may struggle to run a fast final 2/3 furlongs in heavy ground, for example, and would look perhaps misleadingly to be a poor performance. The opposite conclusion may occur on faster going. What sort of range of pars do you find covers the majority of UK racing?

3. Simon Rowlands | 02 September 2010

   Thanks for that, Francis. We are in agreement on this!

   As an illustration of how a race might typically be run, if at a true pace, the following would be my optimum times-by-furlong for a 1m race at Kempton (flat, right-handed) run in a total of 1:40.00

   First 1f: 14.62sec (standing start)
   Second 1f: 11.54sec
   Third 1f: 11.75sec
   Fourth 1f: 12.35sec (bend)
   Fifth 1f: 12.62sec (bend)
   Sixth 1f: 12.32sec
   Penultimate 1f: 12.13sec
   Final 1f: 12.67sec

   Which shows that horses slow down a bit in the final furlong. This is what you would expect, as a horse finishing faster than the preceding furlong(s) has unused energy (though it could be argued that a "perfect" ride would have the horse beginning to decelerate only at the point that it crosses the line).

   The above profile is fairly typical for races on polytrack at short of 1¼m. Obviously, it will be different for turf and, especially, for tracks with different conformations.

   Simon

4. Simon Rowlands | 02 September 2010

   Thanks again, Darth.

   The effect of ground on optimum finishing speed %s is something I could do with looking at more closely. However, my previous research suggested that the optimums apply with no need for modification for turf ground that is good (good to soft in places) and firmer and for all-weather surfaces which are not slow. I strip out data which comes under more extreme circumstances.

   In my experience, a slow surface will lead to a horse getting nearer to its "plodding" rate at the end and might suggest (if using methods that apply to more normal circumstances) that the horses went too quickly early when they did not.

   As a rule of thumb, you might be looking at a finishing speed of 95%, rather than 100%, for a race run on soft/heavy ground or especially slow all-weather.

   The vast majority of my sectional analysis takes place on all-weather (and the vast majority of that on a "normal" surface), while I would regard good and good to firm going on turf to be absolutely ideal for sectionals.

   That, as an example, has been the case by my reckoning with 80% of modern-day Derbys and was the case in this year's Betfair King George at Ascot.

   Simon

5. Charlie | 03 September 2010

   Hi Simon

   Bit late to the party, but anyway here is my 2 pence worth.

   
   The race starts when the stalls open. What happens in Fraction 1, has an impact on what happens in Fraction 2 and what happens in these previous two fractions has a MASSIVE impact on what happens in Fraction 3 and the subsequent time( times), betean lengths and finishing positions

   
   Signed

   Charlie

   A Student of H Sartin and J Bradshaw.

   :)

6. Simon Rowlands | 03 September 2010

   Hi Charlie.

   I agree with you on this. What happens in one sectional has an impact on what happens in all others.

   It would be great to have several sectionals in a race, as was the case when TurfTrax provided electronic ones. In the absence of that, one sectional (in tandem with the overall time) can tell you a great deal about what happened, before and after, providing that sectional is carefully chosen.

   As I understand it, the effect of running at speeds that differ from optimum will be exponential. That is, the effect of a 2-unit difference in time will be 4 times that of a 1-unit difference in time.

   I deal with this in next week's blog.

   Simon