That's pretty much what I posted earlier: Equibase has no jurisdiction over each Photo Finish Company.

And the idea that beaten lengths is a function of time rather than distance is a dubious assertion. I can imagine it's relevant IF a track's teletimer is directly integrated into the Photo Finish Equipment. That intergation is MUCHO expensive to do, and a lot of small to medium tracks never did it (and I'll bet a lot still haven't). I know what I saw with my own eyes for 17 years: races were timed with a hand held stopwatch in many places, even up until I left racing in 2001 (and good that they did because race teletimers malfunction often enough). If someone tries to explain to Jerry, me or anyone else that beaten lengths is a "function of time" under these circumstances, then send them my way: I've got a bridge for sale.

Why do beaten lengths matter anyway? If you watch someone like Jerry Bailey ride, beaten lengths as a reflection of a performance's quality is questionable at best. Once Bailey sees his horse is getting nothing, he wraps up on them, and they coast home. Shane Sellers, Kent Desormeaux - same thing. If these horses aren't at maximum effort from start to finish, how accurate is it to use beaten lengths as a figure making guideline for a horse that's not being asked to do anything? What does it reflect?

For those that don't know, Equibase is a company formed by The Jockey Club & The TRA for the sole purpose of track ownership of Past Performance data, which then was the exclusive property of the Daily Racing Form. When the DRF came under Rupert Murdoch's ownership, fear struck that the DRF would "disappear" and tracks would be up a creek with no PP data, since it was all owned by the DRF and published in their paper. So TRA memeber tracks began hiring their own charting crews and went into direct competition with the DRF compiling chart data for races, and for several years you had what could only be a nightmare for figure people: two sets of PP information about the same races every day. Imagine that: the track program with PP data compiled by Equibase chart people, while the DRF PPs in their paper were compiled by their own chart crews. Discrepancies? Uh, many. So much for exactitude.

About 6-8 years ago, the DRF terminated all of it's track chart crews and simply bought all it's PP data from Equibase (the Equibase crews had a big advantage over the DRF in that they were directly employed by each track, whereas the DRF crews were "media guests" that could literally be denied access to any track that chose to deny them - and some were!).

Regardless of whom was compiling charts, the fact is that Photo Finish Company Employees were responsible for determing lengths beaten. It's their information to give - or not.

M3