TROTTING Undisclosed Penalty In Mobile Starts

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 32076, 26 August 1969, Page 4

TROTTING Undisclosed Penalty In Mobile Starts

(Contributed

by

D.M.L.)

In all the opinions, informed and otherwise, voiced about the mobile barrier, nobody gives any concrete facts. A little simple arithmetic applied to the speeds of horses provides some.

Volume 18 of the New , Zealand Trotting Stud Book lists only 14 alltime two-minute New Zealand pacers. Twominute speed means a speed of 30 miles per hour—one furlong in 15 seconds, or 44 feet in one second. A fair average quaUfytoS speed nowadays would be miles in 3min 24sec. This would give a speed of approximately 261 m.p.h.—one furlong in 17 seconds or 38.8 feet in one second. Thus the difference in speed between a champion and an average horse is 3| m.pi., or 5.2 feet per second. Therefore, every extra foot of ground covered at speed must constitute a handicap. The mobile barrier appears to be an attempt to overcome faulty starting due to various causes (inefficient training, incompetent driving, temperament of the horse, mechanical barrier defects) by running horses in lanes before the "official” start of the race. The speedometer of the vehicle only applies to the vehicle itself and, since trotting courses are more or less circular, the speed of each individual torse must vary with the extra amount of ground required to be covered to keep abreast cf the arm—a speed of an extra one mile an tour for each one

foot ntoe inches (approximately) bey-ood (to motorvehicle and a corresponding decrease for each Ift fito (approximately) inside the itotor-Vehicle. H the vehicle is travelling at 25 m,pJi. round a bend, roughly for each five feet a horse is outside the vehicle, it must produce an extra three miles per hour. A horse 10 feet along the arm would be required to do more than 30 mpii. to keep abreast, while one 10 feet inside the vehicle would be correspondingly restricted to about 10 m.p.h. Only if all the torses behind it covered to equal di*-

tance in an equal time would it be possible for the mobile barrier to give each torse an equal chance. As It works at present, before the “official” start of the race a horse is given, an undisclosed penalty and nobody—punter, owner, or trainer—is allowed any opportunity of finding out exactly what it is. If the mobile barrier is used, the width of the mobile arm should be published in the race book, as should the distance of each “lane” from a clearly indicated marking peg to the starting line—at Addington, for instance, from the 2-furiong peg to the 13furiong start.