It's About Time

Published: April 10, 2014 08:41 am EDT

How precisely should harness racing time its races?

In the April 2011 issue of Trot, Editor Darryl Kaplan posed a hypothetical conversation between a seasoned racing fan and a newcomer to harness racing trying to understand the time of a mile.

A pacer wins a close race. Five horses are all within a length of each other at the wire. An outsider asks, “How fast did that horse go the mile?”

“1:52.4,” replies the racing enthusiast. “Wow,” says the newbie. “Did the second placed horse finish the race in 1:52.5?”

“Ahhh, no,” says the enthusiast. “There is no 1:52.5. That would be 1:53.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” says the newbie, brushing off the comment. “Okay, what was the final time of the...fifth place finisher?”

“1:52.4,” says the enthusiast, sheepishly.

“But, wasn’t that the time of the winner?”

“Yes, the top five horses all recorded the same mile time,” says the enthusiast. “We time races in fifths of a second, and measure it based on lengths behind the winner. Horses are not individually timed.”

“So let me understand this,” says the newcomer, boldly. “You guys have a sport where I need a PhD in mathematics to read the race program, yet your top five finishers are all recorded with identical times? Are you aware that it’s 2011 and you can buy a stopwatch at the dollar store that records hundredths of a second?”

“And another thing,” continues the outsider, his voice escalating. “If 1:52.4 is actually 1:52.8, then say 1:52.8! Your racing terminology is not only confusing – it’s incorrect.”

Fast forward to last week. The United States Trotting Association announced at its Board Meeting that races will be timed in hundredths of a second effective January 1, 2016.

This is much more precise than the fifths of a second currently used in North American racing or the tenths of a second breakdown used in Australia and New Zealand, and was used in Canada in the early 1990s on the Ontario Jockey Club (now WEG) circuit.

The most recent SC web poll asks, "With the customer and fan in mind, how precise should a standardbred horse race be timed?" Have your say by voting and commenting in the most recent SC Web Poll.

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