Kentucky Downs to use new timing vendor, collect stride data

Kentucky Downs in Franklin, Ky., which opens its seven-day, all-turf meet on Thursday, will be using a new vendor for its race-timing that will be accurate to within one-hundredth of a second while simultaneously collecting data on horse’s strides, officials said on Monday.

The new vendor, McLloyd, operates GPS tracking systems at major tracks in Europe and Asia to generate timing data but is new to the U.S. McLloyd has partnered with StrideSAFE, which uses wearable technology to collect data on horse’s movement, to develop a single sensor to generate both timing and stride data for the Kentucky Downs system, the companies said.

The new system will replace the GPS-based GMAX timing system in use at many U.S. tracks through Equibase, the company that is a partnership of The Jockey Club and the Thoroughbred Racing Associations.

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Ted Nicholson, the vice president of racing of Kentucky Downs, said that the saddlecloth for each horse in a race at Kentucky Downs will be fitted with two sensors for redundancy. All of the races will also be hand-timed, Nicholson said.

“We’re not anticipating any problems,” Nicholson said. “McLloyd already does a lot of the European and Asian tracks, and they do a great job there.”

Nicholson said that track officials have met with Equibase representatives to ensure that the data flows smoothly into the existing systems to generate charts and past-performance data.

Kentucky Downs, which races exclusively on the grass, is unique in U.S. racing due to a 1 5/16-mile turf course that contains several large elevation changes. The course is kidney-shaped, rather than oval. With the highest purses in the country, by a large margin, the track’s races generally draw 10-12 horses per race.

The data generated from the StrideSAFE sensors will be made available to trainers by request, Nicholson said. The sensors have been used at tracks in Kentucky and New York to gather data that supporters say can identify changes in gait that may be indicative of musculoskeletal problems putting a horse at increased risk of injury.

Ron Winchell, the co-managing partner of Kentucky Downs, has been an advocate for the StrideSAFE technology. He also said the McLloyd timing system generates “superior data” for timing purposes.

“I really wanted to bring in a system that was more accurate and moves the ball forward,” Winchell said.

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