Del Mar: Officials leave Pacific Classic time unchanged after review

DEL MAR, Calif. – The disputed Pacific Classic final time will stand.

Del Mar officials met Wednesday afternoon to discuss the final time of last Sunday’s Pacific Classic and decided that no disruption occurred with the timing mechanism, leaving the final time for Game On Dude’s electrifying win as 2:00.69 for 1 1/4 miles over the Polytrack synthetic surface.

Track timer Russ Hudak hand-timed the race in 1:59.96, while Trakus, a wireless radio frequency tracing system used at Del Mar, recorded a final time of 1:59.26.

Wednesday afternoon, several track executives, including Hudak and director of racing Tom Robbins, reviewed the race and found no evidence of a malfunction, such as a person tripping the timing device before the horses reached a beam that starts the clock.

"The bottom line is we haven't seen or heard anything that tells us a change is needed," Robbins said in a statement.

During the meeting, several camera angles were reviewed to see if anything odd happened at the start.

“It didn’t appear to happen,” Hudak said.

Hudak said the run-up from the placement of the starting gate to the beam is shorter for races over 1 1/4 miles at Del Mar, at 45 feet. He said the run-up for most races at Betfair Hollywood Park and Santa Anita range from 55 to 70 feet, meaning the runners are at a higher speed when the clock starts.

The official split times of the race, in quarter-mile increments, were 24.19 seconds for the first quarter-mile, 47.96 for a half-mile, 1:12.61 for six furlongs, a mile in 1:36.61, and a final time of 2:00.69.

Trakus recorded quicker times throughout 22.91, 46.83, 1:11.36, 1:35.31, and 1:59.26.

As a result of the discrepancy in the final times, Andy Beyer revised Game On Dude’s Beyer Speed Figure from 109 to 113 after a video review comparing the race with the 2012 running.

When Beyer’s colleague Randy Moss, well-known as a television racing commentator, studied Sunday’s race on a frame-by-frame basis and compared it to the 2012 running won by Dullahan, Moss said the race was .20 of a second slower than last year, at 1:59.74.

Basing the assessment on that final time, Beyer revised Game On Dude’s speed figure to 113. He said he was “a little surprised” by Del Mar’s decision not to alter the time.

“There are many times, for various reasons, when we consider the final time of a race to be an aberration,” Beyer said. “We’ll superimpose our judgment.

“I was a little surprised, but I guess I’m not shocked.”