http://www.newmarketracecourses.co.uk/results/sectional.jsp

There is also talk of at least one possible competitor to TurfTrax in the form of Race-O, which is said to have conducted extensive tests on sectional-timing equipment already.

That’s not to say that Timeform has been kicking its heels waiting for others to show the way. For several years now Timeform has analysed not only times returned at Newmarket but also hand-held ones taken, where possible, by its own racereaders and handicappers.

At their most basic, sectional times can tell you simply how races compare with one another section by section rather than just on overall time. The winners of two races on the same course could record precisely the same overall time but in markedly different ways. Horse A could have been held up in a race run at a slow early pace and quickened remarkably well at the end of it. Horse B could have set a furious early gallop and done particularly well to hang on in front. The information gleaned from this is important to our understanding of the races themselves and the individual horses that ran in them.

With no other details available, all that it may be possible to say in the above example is that Race A was run at a slower early pace than Race B, and that (obviously) Race B was run at a stronger early pace than Race A. In order to put the races in a fuller context more information is needed from the course and from how sectional times behave in general.Over a length of time it is possible to build up profiles for individual courses which indicate how to run a race in order to achieve a good time. From this it follows that we can deduce how not to run a race in order to achieve a good time. The really interesting cases are those where a horse runs in an uneconomical way and yet still records a decent overall timefigure. This is usually a pretty good indication that the horse concerned will better its level of form, sometimes significantly, when circumstances are more favourable.

It has been pointed out that not all horses have the same way of running a race. The optimum sectionals may differ subtly from one horse to the next. This is not unlike saying that all horses have a subtly different capacity for carrying weight or for coping with a number of other factors that affect performance. That doesn’t stop us (and nor should it) from making generalisations about the effect of weight and then considering those instances which seem to differ from those generalisations separately.

The real-world limitations and difficulties implicit in information need not apply significantly more to sectional times than they do to overall race times. Sectionals are in effect a representation of a series of mini races within a race, with the main difference being that horses will be urged to greater effort at some point during an overall race but not necessarily in a given sectional. The same sorts of issues apply to both approaches in the first place, but thereafter sectional analysis needs to be more sophisticated in order to accomodate the multi-dimensional aspect of the subject matter. The issue is complicated further by the fact that certain other features, among them the precise speed or otherwise of the surface, influence the manner in which horses race in general.

Complex problems require complex solutions, but the upshot is that this element of horseracing analysis is imperfectly understood by most and provides an opportunity for anyone prepared to put in the effort.

While straightforward race profiling---Race A was run at a stronger relative pace than Race B, for instance---is an example of sectional analysis at its simplest, at the other end of the spectrum is the possibility that we could quantify to a significant degree of accuracy how much a horse’s overall performance was compromised by the run of the race. Notwithstanding the problems with collecting data that have held back the advance of sectional analysis in Britain, the signs from the courses where accurate information can be acquired are that this is clearly possible, even with the wide variety of racecourses, surfaces and horses that exist.

Before leaving this subject, an example of how fairly simple data collecting can tell you a lot about a race is provided by the 2004 King George & Queen Elizabeth Diamond Stakes at Ascot.

This was an extreme example of how not to run a race in order to achieve a good overall time. For a start, the overall time was remarkably poor for the calibre of horses involved: the winner, Doyen, recorded a timefigure of just 92 compared to a performance rating of 132. A study of the final sectional for the race revealed that that wasn’t particularly good either.

So, did that mean that Doyen was actually a mediocre horse beating other mediocre horses in an internationally-recognised championship event? Some would have you believe that! Closer inspection revealed that the opening sectional of the race (approximately five furlongs in length) was run in a farcically slow time for the leader. A slow early time would normally lead to a fast late time, but we already knew that wasn’t the case. What seemed to have happened is that the middle part of the race had been run at a suicidal gallop. Lo and behold, the near four furlongs from around where the pace picked up until the customary sectional just before the home turn were run remarkably quickly.

The race was an extraordinary affair in which they went: very slowly, very quickly, slightly slowly. As such, the circumstances of it were highly unlikely to be repeated for the runners involved. Just how much this was the case can be seen from the following table of comparisons with other races at the same meeting (sectionals for leader at each juncture):

12f Rated Stakes.... 64.41 sec + 46.56 sec + 41.12 sec = 152.09 sec

12f Handicap......... 64.56 + 45.17 + 43.84 = 153.57

12f King George..... 67.72 + 43.69 + 41.77 = 153.18

Sectionals for the individual horses in the King George also revealed that Sulamani and Tycoon were deserving of extra credit.

The closure of Ascot in the autumn of 2004 for rebuilding, during which the track itself will be altered, consigned a whole mass of useful sectional data to the waste bin. But sectional-timing aficionados should soon have a whole lot more to go at. Furthermore, it is Timeform's intention to start publishing some of its own sectional-timing information and analyses---namely that for the three all-weather tracks and for a small selection of turf courses---from the summer of 2005.

There could, indeed, be exciting sectional times ahead!

Simon Rowlands, April 2005