"Fast-forward nearly four years and a similar scenario may be playing out. On March 25, the New York Times published a story tying increased equine injuries to the sport’s overuse of medication -- legal and illegal -- lax regulation, and a shift of track ownership to casino companies that provide little racing oversight." Thoroughbred Times follows up on NYT story, runs its own injury numbers.

"As a handicapper and speed-figure maker, I want racing to have precise data and I want Trakus to succeed. So I offer a modest proposal. The company should formulate a report that allows users to log in to, say, the Gulfstream Web site and see the key Trakus measurements in the previous starts of every horse on the Gulfstream card. It should invite users’ feedback — letting thousands of eyeballs look for errors that might otherwise go undetected. The company needs to be less focused on developing whizbang graphics and more concerned about giving the best, most accurate data to handicappers."

"It seems very short-sighted. It's a classic example of one part of racing trying to get a slightly bigger slice of the cake, regardless of how big the cake actually is, or what it might mean in a wider sense."

"Last Friday, a race nearly started at the wrong point on the track because of confusion generated by the program. The race was to be run at about 5 1/2 furlongs on turf, but because of wet conditions was run at 5 1/2 furlongs on the main track. In the program, the distance was noted by its fractional equivalent, 11/16, which racing people don’t use. Because the fraction looks like 1 1/16, you can understand how the gate initially was put at the sixteenth pole, the starting point for a mile-and-a-sixteenth race, before the problem was corrected." (Via @EJXD2)

Very interesting app for visualizing chart data (API to come).

Photo-finish camera company develops system similar to Trakus. "With this system, you can get a split for every inch of the track, and you can see all of the velocity and acceleration peaks for each horse." (Testing at Laurel early 2010.)

"The British Horseracing Authority has made tremendous strides with its website, which is now very usable. But it is a long way from being ideal and I would suggest that the BHA's money would be better spent, in the first instance, on improving the service it provides to existing fans of the sport, before it worries about bringing in new people whose attention it will not then be able to keep." Offers five excellent suggestions for improvement, including the addition of a "well-maintained statistics section to rummage through."

"This flourishing ecosystem of startups is just one sign that scientific publishing is moving from being a production industry to a technology industry. A second sign of this move is that the nature of information is changing."

Historical criteria as applied to 2009 Kentucky Derby prospects. Includes 2003-2008 Derby fields and 1998-2008 top three finishers for background.

Beyer speed figures for Breeders' Cup fields

Beyer speed figures for Derby fields

Polytrack results through August 17, 2007