Race Distances

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OddDog

OddDog

Mild mannered janitor
Staff member
Jun 2, 2011
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Berlin, Germany
Now maybe the latest Android from Samsung can measure the distance to the moon within a sixteenth of an inch but WHY OH WHY do we get racecards quoting a race distance of (for example, taken from the 3.20 at Brighton on Sunday 23rd August) 6f 209y - for ****'s sake, this is a 7 furlong race. Horses do not run in a laser-guided straight line between 2 points. 7 furlongs is in fact 6 furlongs and 220 yards, so come on, let's just forget the 11 yards and call it 7 furlongs. For ****'s sake <doh>

Going through the card at Brighton tomorrow, you can see what I mean in terms of this bollocks:

2:20 5f 59y
2:50 5f 59y
3:20 6f 209y
3:50 1m 1f 209y
4:20 1m 3f 196y
4:50 5f 213y
5:20 5f 214y

Surely this is ****ing nonsense? The 5:20 is 1 yard further than the 4:50? Really? I don't know, maybe I should just relax but this seems like a load of old bollocks. They are both 6 furlong races, surely?

Rant over.
 
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It would be great if they could guarantee the accuracy of the race distances to within a yard.

I note that on Wednesday at York they had moved the running rail on the bend in and they declared that this would make all races on the round course (more than seven furlongs) 42 yards shorter; however, since they had already printed the racecards, the advertised distances were all wrong for everything but the sprints. The Juddmonte International was 1 mile 2 furlongs and 46 yards not 88 yards. According to the Juddmonte website it is 10.5 furlongs. Shortening the race made no difference to Gleneagles as he did not run anyway!

I wonder if anybody actually measures the distances over in France where they use metric not Imperial. Is the Arc really run over 2400 metres? In a photo finish, 2399 metres or 2401 metres is critical...
 
Could they not shorten a winning distance from nose to a gee hair while we're at it
 
Imperial distances in a metric world... Seems crazy when you highlight it like that Oddy... Whats in a yard...? And did they really move the stalls the one yard as well...???
 
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