Horse Racing for Noobs

It was pointed out to me that, for someone trying to get non-racing fans into the sport, my posts are a filled with jargon virtually unreadable to the common man. As such, I've decided to try and provide some layman explanations of terms and subjects which are second nature to horse racing aficionados. So without further ado, here's is the first post in my Horse Racing for Noob's series.

Lesson #1- Horse Racing Math

One of the things I used to find the most difficult to understand about horse racing was the math. I'm a verbally oriented person myself, and though I'd heard the classic joke about figuring out the speed of light in furlongs per fortnight (it's 1,802,617,500,000, by the way), that doesn't really tell you much if you don't know what furlong is. In a room of 6 intelligent folks this past weekend (not counting myself, of course) only one person knew what a furlong was, and he was accused of guessing.

A furlong, very simply, is 1/8 of a mile. Therefore, 8 furlongs (or 8f, as it may sometimes be shortened) is a mile. The American classic distance for a race is a mile and a quarter, or 10 furlongs. The mile and a half length of the Belmont (which is about as far as horses go in the Western hemisphere) is 12 furlongs. The Preakness is an oddball, being a mile and 3/16. That's 9.5 furlongs. Weirded out yet?

Now we bring speed into the picture. When horses work before a race they'll work a certain number of furlongs. Sometimes they'll 'gallop', which, despite being the name for the fastest gait a horse has, actually implies that the horse is going slow and not being pushed. They could also 'breeze', which means they are being encouraged a little, but not pushed into an all out drive. Sometimes they may have a "blowout", which is a fast work where the horse is pushed along a bit, and is often given shortly before an expected race. So how do you know when a horse is actually going fast, either in a race or a work?

Basically, although there is some variation over types of tracks and over the spread of years, it's accepted that a horse is going pretty fast when it runs a furlong in 12 seconds (that's about 37.5 miles per hour). This is somewhat archaically referred to as a "twelve-clip". I don't think people actually say that much anymore, but since I grew up reading books about great horses of the past, I tend to favor an older vocabulary. Most stakes horses should be able to string together at least 4 furlongs in 12, it's when you start getting beyond those distances that things get heavy. Here's the breakdown of times for various racing and working lengths (in minutes and seconds):

4 furlongs- 48 seconds
5 furlongs- 1:00
6 furlongs- 1:12
7 furlongs- 1:24
8 furlongs- 1:36
9 furlongs- 1:48
10 furlongs- 2:00
11 furlongs- 2:12
12 furlongs-2:24

This, of course, should not be taken to mean that the horses actually run 12 seconds every furlong; usually it's less than twelve for some furlongs of the race, more than 12 for others. But basically, if you see horses racing for the half mile pole in a race and the clock stops at 47 "and change" (meaning 47 seconds and a partial second), you know the front runners are not loafing along. If your horse works 4f in 46.60 (as Eight Belles did recently), you know it's blazing along (notably, Eight Belles' trainer thought she might have gone too fast for that workout).

Now, to show you how hard it is to keep this pace up. We'll do this by examining the three very familiar Triple Crown races (run conveniently at 3 different distances). As I said, most good horses can keep up this top speed for a handful of furlongs, but it gets progressively harder the longer you go. The mile and 3/16 Preakness should (if a horse were to keep up a twelve clip the whole time) produce a running time of 1:54. This running time has been equaled or beaten on numerous occasions in the history of the race.

Comparatively, in the 133 years the Kentucky Derby has been run, only 4 horses have ever finished the race with a time of 2:00 flat or better.* The fastest time ever for the Derby was 1:59 and 2/5 seconds (note that, although more sophisticated timers now allow for calculation of running times into the hundredths place, older races could only be determined down to fifths of a second and often people still refer to these divisions when referencing a horse's performance). So, even the fastest time ever for that classic race is only 3/5th's of a second faster than the 2 minute mark. Mind you, this is not the world record performance for a mile and a quarter distance, but given the myriad of difficulties a horse can run into in the Derby, it is by no means unimpressive.

Moving on to the Belmont, which at a mile and a half, is likely to be the longest race an American horse will ever run. The time of 2:24 has only been achieved once in the race, and that performance stands as the world record mark for that distance. The next closest finish for the Belmont is 2:26, meaning that the second best Belmont performer ever would still have finished 2 seconds behind the world record mark.

So what does 2 seconds mean, really? It doesn't seem like that much, but in a sport that measures time by fifths of a second regularly (and even smaller fractions practically), it's a considerable amount. Generally, 1/5th of a second is assumed to equal approximately one horse length. How much is that? Well, it's not an exact measurement. It's supposedly as long as a horse is from nose to tail, basically 8 feet or so. So, if we assume that a horse travels about 5 lengths every second, a horse 2 seconds behind another is cruising along 10 lengths (or 80 feet) behind the leader. More impressively, the horse that actually managed the 2:24 Belmont finished 31 lengths (or 248 feet) in front of the second place horse that day. Man o' War was once reported to have won a race (obviously, over questionable competition) by 100 lengths. Yes, that's 800 feet, or 266 yards (basically, 2 and a half football fields).

So there you have the basic math necessary to understand running times and works. I hope that this has been educational for you all.

* My favorite horse racing trivia trick question is "Name all 4 horses to have finished the Derby in 2 minutes or less." Answer (from fastest to slowest times) in inviso-text below:

Secretariat, Sham (who was 2nd to Secretariat), Monarchos, Northern Dancer