Sectional timing should be functional at 4Racing jurisdiction’s soon.
The team who have been testing it only have one issue they are not happy with and that is the “latency”.
This means the data being received from the course is not reaching “the cloud” quickly enough and the time delay means the live graphic display of the horses’ race positions is a bit behind.
However, the devices being used are sitting in a Telkom lab being worked on and the interested parties are also doing what they can to solve it.
4Racing’s Stephen Watson is confident the issue will be sorted out and said once they had got over that hurdle the system should be up and running quickly.
He said they were happy with the integrity of the data which is being produced.
The public and the National Horseracing Authority (handicappers) will be provided with the data once the system is up and running.
Each horse has a saddle unit, so every horses’ time is recorded per section and there will also be data provided such as average speed and distance covered etc.
It will be up to the handicappers and form studiers to build patterns per distance from the data provided.
Those few in the country who take time to understand the merit rating system and the accompany handicapping have eked out an edge for themselves.
The sectional timing data has the potential to provide a further edge.