Quote:
Originally Posted by cj
If people can't rely on the data, it is going to hold back any potential growth. The timing issues have to turn off most younger people looking to get interested the game that have a stats background or are interested in analytics. Of course there is lots of data points that matter, but when analyzing performance how fast a race is run (internally and at the finish) is at least as important as any other metric.
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Also, timing is important for historical reasons. Horse races have been timed since before the days of Man O' War (it had some meaning when Man O' War's track record for 1 5/8 miles at Belmont was broken after 98 yeras). The sport, like track and field and swimming, has always considered the times of races important, even among fans who really didn't care about speed figures.
That doesn't require that the times be accurate to the 1/100th of a second the way cj's speed figures sometimes require, but it does require reasonably accurate timing. It means something when a horse breaks 2 minutes for 1 1/4 miles or 1:34 for a mile, for instance, and if the timing's 2/5th of a second off or something similar you won't know that.
