During a presentation at Wednesday’s Grayson-Jockey Club Research Foundation Welfare and Safety of the Racehorse Summit, Duff Gordon presented a chart showing the acceleration and speed of a horse during the race, and how it was impeded by the winner.
“You can see how that horse in blue, how much its velocity was cut off,” said Duff Gordon, pointing to the marked deceleration of a beaten runner at the time of The Ridler’s antics.
“That’s a much better way of telling the story rather than running the replay 700 times, which is what the TV companies have done to date,” said Duff Gordon. “The stewards can’t yet use that information,” he added, “but hopefully they will soon.”
“This is a new frontier,” said Scott Palmer, equine medical director for the New York Gaming Commission, about the StrideSAFE sensor, which TDN has written [in the past].
Nevertheless, the panelists emphasized how, in many regards, the stamp from data collection on the racing world is still very much a fresh one.
More on new data collections and applications in horse racing:
