Project to track works by GPS returns encouraging data

LEXINGTON, Ky. – A pilot project to use GPS technology to time workouts conducted in September and October at Keeneland Racecourse in Kentucky has proved the system can work in the future with a larger workload, the administrators of the project said on Wednesday.

Timing under the pilot project, conducted by Trackmaster, a subsidiary of Equibase, in partnership with that company’s technology partner, Total Performance Data, was conducted on a total of 16 days from Sept. 15 to the end of Keeneland’s fall meet on Oct. 27, according to David Siegel, the president of Trackmaster. While the system was used to collect workout data on only a handful of horses each day, Siegel said that “from a technology perspective, it proved it could work.”

The pilot project was the second of its kind, Siegel said, after an “extremely limited test” conducted earlier in the year at Golden Gate Fields in Northern California. Siegel said that an expanded test project is likely to be conducted at Golden Gate after the start of the new year, when a racing rule will go into effect in California that requires every horse in the state to be microchipped.

The Keeneland project used the GPS system to communicate with trackers worn by riders exercising horses. The trackers were able to record comprehensive timing and location data on the horses, and that data was used to calculate a number of other metrics, including stride length and speed, Siegel said. It was also used to compare with the times recorded by existing timing staff.

“We found out it was way more accurate than a human with a stopwatch,” Siegel said.

The project is part of an overall push by Equibase, the industry’s official data supplier, to move to a GPS system for timing races and workouts. A GPS timing system designed by Total Performance Data is already in use for races held at Golden Gate, Woodbine Racetrack in Canada, and Laurel Park and Pimlico Race Course in Maryland. Equibase is a partnership between the Jockey Club and most U.S. racetracks.

Siegel said that a GPS tracking system for workouts would be most efficient when all horses on the racetrack are required to be microchipped, which the Jockey Club began requiring for all registered foals as of 2017. At that point, the system would use scanners at check-in stations to identify horses prior to entering the track for a workout, and that identification would be married to the tracker worn by the rider while both are on the track.

“After that rider gets on the track, from that moment on, we will know everything we want to know about that horse,” Siegel said.

The identification of horses for workouts and the timing of works is currently conducted by track personnel and official clockers who communicate the identities of horses over radios, although different protocols are in place at different tracks. The current protocols are notoriously lax, and can result in inaccurate times or completely fictional works. In addition, the track is a chaotic place on busy mornings, and it’s easy for a clocker to miss or mistime a workout.

Siegel said the pilot project revealed how porous the current methods are.

“I had kind of heard about all that, but we saw it happen, and it was going on right under our noses,” Siegel said.

For that reason, Siegel said he expected some horsemen to resist the implementation of a system that uses the microchips and GPS to definitively identify and time horses.

“There will be trainer pushback, there will be rider pushback,” Siegel said. “At the point that we can prove this can all work, and the microchips are all in, it would probably require a regulatory rule.”