dumb question about horse betting...

SportSavant · May 25, 2004

Pinnacle has smarty Jones prop's wether he will win by certain amount of 'lenghths' or not.

I assume they mean horse lenghths? how do they measure that exactly?

wilheim · May 25, 2004

SS - A length is ruffly the length of an average racehorse's body from it's rear to tip of it's nose.. If a horse wins by his body length it wins by one length.

wil.

SportSavant · May 25, 2004

is the term 'lenghth' in horse racing an actual measurment in terms of feet or inches...

I cant beleive you can bet that smarty jones will not win by three lenghths & get even money???

wilheim · May 25, 2004

To be honest I am not 100% sure but I do not think there is an actual measurement in feet or inches for a length. The stewards judge the distance based on an average racehorse body length.

wil.

SportSavant · May 25, 2004

interesting...so if I bet that smarty jones will not win by three lenghths or more...& then he wins...& it is very close to three lenghths...

it would be the stewards jusdge that makes the ultimate determination...is this how others understand this?

tuleythetout · May 25, 2004

Not so dumb questions really...

It's kind of funny because I don't recall ever hearing a length of being mentioned in terms of feet or inches, and I've worked for the Form for the better part of the last 11 years.

This site says 8.5 feet: http://encarta.msn.com/text_761566086___5/Horse_Racing.html

This site says 8 feet:
http://www.gamingtoday.com/Glossary/horses.cfm/

[This message was edited by tuleythetout on May 26, 2004 at 01:44 AM.]

wilheim · May 25, 2004

Yes - you will have to check the full result charts for the official length of vicory. Here is a link to Sunday's races at Belmont. You can see what the winning horse won by. eg.
5 Polish Times (Luzzi, M.J.) 120 L 4 3 2-Head 2-2 1/2 1-4 3/4 2.70

The 5 horse Polish Times went from 2nd to the lead and won by 4 and three quarter lengths. he went off at $2.70 to one or in other words he paid $7.40 for a two dollar bet.

Equibase Results

wil.

HerzvanRentle · May 26, 2004

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by SportSavant:
I assume they mean horse lenghths? how do they measure that exactly?<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

AFAIK they do it from final times 1L = 0.2s
If Smarty Runs 2.28.0 in Belmont and the second runs 2.28.8 the chart will read 4L.

As a sidebar, in reality at 1Length = 9ft...
12furlongs = 7920ft = 880Lengths
So for Smarty 1L in Belmont = 148secs/880L = 0.168secs

The real winning margin was 0.8secs divided by 0.168 gives 4.76 Lengths even though the chart will read 4L because they approximate 1L to 0.2s.