NEWS that an investment of £900,000 would be made available from Levy Board funds to incentivise the production of sectional timing in Britain was largely greeted with cheers in media circles, but not everyone is a fan of the development, and some would argue that they find no value in such information and would prefer to see the money invested in other ways.

First of all, the naysayers are wrong, as indeed naysayers have been wrong about absolutely everything, ever. The it-will-never-catch-on mob would have us sitting in caves wearing animal skins and hunched over the fire all day. Except that fire will never catch on. See also “What did the Romans ever do for us”.

What is more interesting about the debate, which merely proves the value of sectional timing and other “new” methods of analysing form, is that it is so heated. In order for racing to be genuinely engaging to its audience, there must be disagreement, and this is particularly true when looking at betting. Those who argue against sectionals will complain that the extra information will simply be absorbed by the market and rather than being of any benefit to punters, it will simply make it even harder to find angles against bookmakers who will utilise the information to make fewer mistakes in their pricing policy.

In the first instance, this gives far too much credence to odds compilers, who were once the unsung heroes of the industry, but are now merely a bunch of social misfits who you wouldn’t trust to sit the right way round on the toilet. When it comes to offering horseracing odds, bookmakers have been reliant on buying cheap product and offering it on a restriction-based supply and demand basis for some time, and that works, so they won’t be spending extra money on clever race analysis instead.

Equation

Secondly, however valuable sectional information is, it remains just one variable to put into the equation which seeks to find winners. Take the case of Visinari in the July Stakes as an example. In days of yore, he would have been a visually impressive winner of a maiden race taking on horses with more experience, many of whom had the immeasurable benefit of racing at Royal Ascot to tighten their competitive sinews, metaphorically speaking. In that context he would be labelled a dark horse and would attract support, but he probably wouldn’t start favourite against proven Pattern colts. Leaving aside the fact that sectional analysis of his debut was extremely difficult due to the nature of the coverage and the lack of current technology, modern experts are able to make confident statements about his raw ability based on timings, stride length etc. As a result, Visinari was less of an unknown quantity in terms of talent and was sent off at a much shorter price as a result. The antis will moan that their price was ruined by such analysis, but this ignores a hugely important factor. Not everyone wanted to back him.

For every sectionalista purring over Visinari’s debut, there is an old-fashioned judge who believes that raw talent is not the primary factor in finding winners, and would point out that inexperience is a factor which counts against talented horses in competitive races, and aspects like ideal tactics are unknowns, while any flaw in a horse’s make-up is hidden by victory over lesser rivals. Sometimes defeat teaches a horse more than easy victory, and that is something those who saw Royal Lytham run a big race in the Coventry Stakes will have noticed. It’s also the case that horses who run huge figures on debut tend not to improve at the same rate as those who post ‘normal’ performances, so for every Frankel identified, there are a few who are simply ahead of the curve early, and who tend to revert to the mean over time; the exact means of identifying future superstars has not been found, and the overhyping of outliers is sure to increase with greater access to the numbers.

So while advanced analysis will enable us to identify horses with above-average ability, and to put a reliable figure on such performances, such analysis will merely spark debate, rather than suppress it, and it will not stifle betting markets, but more often bring them to life.