David Thiselton
Sectional timing is available for everybody to study and the best place to view it is on the Gallop website (https://www.gallop.co.za/fixtures/fixtureIframeLink).
Those who can master it might well be in the pound seats, but it is not easy to make head or tail of the statistics and probably requires a lot of experience. Colour coding does make identifying the fastest three horses in each section very easy.
However, there is the odd stand out and a race that looks to fall into that category is the maiden win of the Mike and Mathew de Kock-trained What A Winter colt Buddy Boy.
This three-year-old drew away to win his maiden by six lengths at Hollywoodbets Scottsville on September 14 when stepped up to 1600m second time out.
It was visually impressive but the first signal that he might have been flattered was when Mathew de Kock said in an interview before his next start at Hollywoodbets Greyville over 1600m on Sunday that he had been “whacked” by the handicapper, who awarded him a 90 merit rating.
The De Kock yard would not normally say that about a horse whom they were earmarking for a race like the Gr 1 Hollywoodbets Cape Guineas, so this prompted a look at the sectional timing data.
There seemed to be some immediately obvious conclusions that could be drawn about that race from the sectional timing statistic available.
The first noticeable statistic was that Buddy Boy’s 400 to finish time was 24.364 seconds and the runner up Green Glow’s 400 to finish time was 24.741 seconds.
Only two of the other horses managed a 400 to finish time of below 26 seconds and one of them just scraped below on 25.936.
The signs were there that the pace had been too fast for this standard of race and Buddy Boy and Green Glow had been the only two horses able to stay on.
While, Green Glow had appeared to run on extremely well from an almost tailed off position, from where he clearly looked to be outpaced, the statistics showed him to just be passing slowing down horses and the winner actually finished faster than him.
Buddy Boy came from seventh place at the 400m and whilst looking to pull way impressively, the statistics showed him to be drawing away from slowing horses. Green Glow did make some inroads in the last 100m, but Buddy Boy was possibly being eased up at that stage.
A look at the following race over 1600m confirms the first suspicions.
SunnyBills Ferrari was the pacemaker in Buddy Boy’s race and ran from the start to the 1000m mark in 34.113, whilst the winner of the B Stakes race in the next race, Officer In Command, ran it in 35.363, while Buddy Boy ran it in 35.119.
Officer In Command’s finishing time was 35.685 compared to Buddy Boy’s 36.717 and SunnyBills Ferrari’s 38.688.
The going was soft on the day, so Buddy Boy proved himself no slouch by running the same overall time as the 85 rated older horse Officer In Command carrying the same weight.
However, a look at races in similar conditions shows Officer In Command’s time and performance to actually be below par. It was also a small five horse field, which tends to lead to slower times, and was in fact the first time he had been finished in the frame for nearly a year.
So, Buddy Boy’s time could not have been viewed as exceptional.
Coupled with the fact that the sectional timing statistics showed him to be beating horses who had not performed efficiently at all, the alarm bells should have been ringing.
It is always easy to talk in retrospect and this article should have been written before Sunday’s races, but sectional timing is still a new discipline in SA racing and this article is intended to inspire punters to make use of it.
Ultimately there looked to be two potentially false favourites on Sunday, Green Glow and Buddy Boy, as both were flattered by the bare result of that previous race.
On Sunday they duly finished a 1,10 length second at odds of 2/1 and a a two length fifth at odds of 15/10 respectively, both races over the same 1600m trip.
The Hollywoodbets Greyville times are subject to inspection, because the races are not over an exact distance and are carded as over “about 1600m” etc. This is due to a limitation in moving the starting stalls back or forward to cater for the false rail positioning. This must be taken into account when the sectional times are looked at and the wise can possibly get an edge by looking at the statistic “distance covered per sections” as it could tell the story of why some times are faster or slower than others in different meetings and a slower time could actually be a better performance.
