Canterbury to time races straight from the gate, eliminating 'run-ups'

Canterbury Park in Shakopee, Minn., will begin timing its races straight out of the starting gate during next year’s Thoroughbred meet, foregoing a long-standing practice in U.S. Thoroughbred racing in which the timer does not start until horses have covered a certain amount of ground.

Canterbury will become the first track in the U.S. to eliminate the so-called “run-up,” the distance from the starting gate to the point at which the timer starts. In most races, the run-up is relatively short, measured in tens of feet. But at some tracks on surfaces in specific configurations, the run-up can be as long as 200 feet.

Chris Merz, Canterbury’s director of racing, said the decision to eliminate the run-up was based on “transparency” and the need to present a better product to gamblers who are facing a flood of options as more and more U.S. states legalize sports wagering.

“For the first time in U.S. Thoroughbred racing history, we will be timing races accurately,” Merz said. “We need to start doing things better in racing. With sports wagering everywhere, we need to change.”

Merz said that starting next year, every dirt race will be run at the exact distance published in the condition book and program.

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"For dirt, we'll start everything on the pole,” Merz said, referring to the poles placed around the dirt track at sixteenth-mile intervals.

Turf races will be tricker, Merz said, because the circumference of the turf course varies based on where temporary rails are set up. Temporary rails are used to provide fresh areas of turf to run over and allow chewed-up areas of the turf course to regenerate.

“We’re currently doing all the measurements on that,” Merz said.

The system of using a run-up has been a pet peeve for Patrick Cummings, the executive director of the Thoroughbred Idea Foundation, which presses for changes to racing that favor horseplayers or the long-term health of the game. In a post on the Thoroughbred Idea Foundation’s website, Cummings said that the decision by Canterbury was a “watershed moment” for Thoroughbred racing.

“For more than a century, we have endured inaccuracy in racing’s most fundamental data points – time and distance,” Cummings wrote. “The inconsistencies created by running and timing races with run-up are too numerous to count, but this is a much-needed first step toward embracing accuracy – for horseplayers, horse owners, and any stakeholder in the sport."

Merz said that horseplayers will need to get accustomed to seeing slower times for Canterbury races for the first quarter-mile. With a run-up, timing of the race does not generally begin until horses have reached full speed. With the run-up eliminated, the time horses take to leave the gate and accelerate to running speed will now be counted.

In a blog post announcing the change on Canterbury’s website, the decision was also applauded by Randy Moss, the television announcer and a member of the speed-figure team for Beyer Speed Figures.

“This will produce more consistency in timing,” he said.

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