False Start: Horse Racing’s Run-Up Conundrum

How long is a mile-long horse race?

If you answered, “one mile,” you’re wrong. If you answered, “it depends on the track,” you’re right.

The difference between a mile-long race at Pimlico, home of the Preakness Stakes, and Churchill Downs, home of the Kentucky Derby, depends on a polarizing practice in North American horse racing called the “run-up.” Rather than timing a race right when the gates open, it’s standard practice on this continent to start the timer when the fastest horse “trips the beam” a short distance from the starting gate.

But that short distance can vary. At Pimlico, the run-up is about five feet, whereas at Churchill, it’s more like 160.

“At Pimlico, the horses are barely getting started, whereas at Churchill, they’re as fast as they’re gonna go,” observed Craig Milkowski, chief of speed figures for Timeform U.S.

But the problem isn’t so much that one race is being run at a distance that’s 155 feet longer than the other, it’s that, unless the horse that wins goes wire to wire, its true time isn’t being accurately measured, which can create serious issues for handicappers hoping for an apples-to-apples comparison between entrants.

“The first horse to complete the run-up is the one who starts the timing. What if he goes way too fast and gets tired and finishes dead last?” Milkowski explained. “All the other horses are being penalized because he started the timer early.”

As with Category 1 rules for interference, which have been adopted in precisely one state (Oklahoma), timing from when the gate opens is an international standard that the U.S. has been stubbornly slow to consider. Next year, Minnesota’s Canterbury Park will become the first in the country to do away with run-ups for all distances on dirt, timing horses as soon as they break from the gate.

“Run-ups can vary, so it just gives a more accurate measure,” Milkowski said of Canterbury’s shift. “There’s no more guessing. We know exactly how long it takes to get from Point A to Point B.”

Faster, but not on paper

Ten years ago, Milkowski authored a blog post on run-ups in which he explained, “The effect of this is that every horse EXCEPT the horse that hits the beam first is timed using the official distance of the race PLUS the distance the first horse is ahead when it begins the timing.”

In the same post, he also presented the following scenario involving two theoretical races at Santa Anita Park:

Race 1: Horse A out-sprints the field early and trips the beam five seconds after the break from the gate. The next horse, Horse B, doesn’t cross the beam until .30 seconds later. The leader goes much too fast early, quits badly, and staggers home last, well back of the others. Horse B takes over the lead and wins the race. The final time is reported as 1:36.00. The total time needed to complete this race from gate to wire was 1:36.00 seconds plus the five seconds it took to reach the beam, for a total of 1:41.00.

Race 2: Horse C breaks alertly, but not as quickly as Horse A above. He trips the beam 5.30 seconds after the start. He wins the race wire to wire, and the final time is once again reported as 1:36.00. The total time needed to complete this race from gate to wire was 1:36.00 seconds plus the 5.30 seconds of “untimed” racing, for a total of 1:41.30.

Horse B clearly ran the faster race — .30 seconds equals roughly two full lengths in racing parlance — yet a potential horse bettor attempting to compare the two horses would be presented with identical times. That, in a nutshell, is the main quibble with run-ups.

“Accuracy matters. This is a watershed moment for American racing,” Thoroughbred Idea Foundation Executive Director Patrick Cummings wrote in a blog post after Canterbury made its announcement last week. “For more than a century, we have endured inaccuracy in racing’s most fundamental data points — time and distance. The inconsistencies created by running and timing races with run-up are too numerous to count, but this is a much-needed first step towards embracing accuracy — for horseplayers, horse owners, and any stakeholder in the sport.”

‘Not as easy as you think’

There’s actually another North American venue that times some of its races straight out of the gate. That’d be Pimlico, which is owned by 1/ST (aka the Stronach Group) — although the Baltimore track’s decision to abandon run-ups for 6-furlong races was less intentional than one might assume.

As Mike Rogers, president of 1/ST’s racing division, explained to US Bets, Pimlico was recently preparing to shift its timing system when it surveyed the 6-furlong course and realized it was about eight feet short of its prescribed distance. The run-up on that course happened to be exactly eight feet, so Pimlico simply began starting its timer for 6-furlong races as soon as the gate opened.

1/ST does not, however, have any imminent plans to eliminate run-ups for other distances at Pimlico or at its other tracks, which include Gulfstream and Santa Anita. This is because, as Rogers explained, “Some of the run-ups, it’s really hard to modify.”

Using Pimlico’s 6-furlong course as an example, Rogers said, “I would like to have backed that starting gate up even further, but we’re already at the turn and we have a carve-out for the outside lane. If I were to give them just a little bit of run-up, it would cost field size because I can’t use the stalls on the inside.

“Every track has these little nuances; it’s not as easy as you think it is. At some places, it (getting rid of a run-up) might be easy, but at others, making a slight change can be really challenging.”

Rogers agreed that “minimizing the run-up is the right thing to do,” suggesting that “when you can’t modify the run-up, the next best thing to do is to give people the data.”

By this he means that bettors be provided with two times for a given race: the true time from the starting gate to the finish line and the “run-up” time from the start line (where the beam is) to the finish line.

“To modify the run-ups is harder than just giving the bettor the data,” Rogers added. “Running 22 [seconds] flat for a first quarter with no run-up is different than running 22 with a 50-foot run-up. If a horse is running 22 with no run-up, that horse is freakin’ moving.”