chicken or egg

[sammy10k]

I thought they were reading photos like this:

http://www.aro.co.za/news/PRIXDUCAPPHOTOFINISH2003.JPG

It looks like a still when the winner crossed the line but it\'s actually the photo finish camera that catches each horse when they hit the wire.  There is no shutter on the camera - it just taking pictures of what is passing by a very small area at the finish line.

[TGJB]

At this point most tracks are using a digital device of some sort. Details next week.

[nicely nicely]

You should also check out

http://www.teletimer.com/

[sammy10k]

I emailed the people at Teletimer and asked how to take lengths-behind back to time.  They told me there methods are proprietary.

[beyerguy]

It\'s a sad day when exact final time of each horse is \"proprietary.\"  Pardon my French, but what an effing joke the data is in horse racing compared to nearly any other sport on the face of the earth!

[sammy10k]

I\'m right there with you beyerguy.  If you\'re watching the 100 meters in the Olympics they don\'t just give you the winner\'s time and then tell you all the other times are proprietary.

[Millennium3]

I worked in racing for 17 years, and this link [www.aro.co.za] to the photo is exactly what the photo finish people look at after every race. And it\'s the PHOTO FINISH employee who for years was responsible for naming the lengths that separated each horse in every race every day at every track.

In the old days (meaning up through the year 2000 or 2001) the \"film strip\" was black & white and took about 4 minutes to develop. It was then \"splashed down\" as a projected image onto a white surface into the placing judges booth so they could determine the order of finish, but the actual call of lengths was determined by the photo finish employee, whom then gave the order of finish and \"lengths beaten\" to the Racing Form, Horseman\'s Bookeeper, and others.

For anyone that ever counted on accuracy of lengths behind has to keep in mind this was in fact a subjective call by the Employee of the Photo Company (and there were a lot of them) that the contract with the track.

What\'s shocking to me is that evidently, if I\'m reading this string right, Jerry had no idea exactly how such things as margins were actually computed until he called Equibase (which has only been around for 12 years or less). Seems to me accuracy in information like that would have been a high priority for those making figures.

M3