'You would need a good computer programme'

In the interests of open debate, while the Jockey Club decides whether it should adopt the Trakus timing system we saw in action at Meydan, we report an e-mail from a reader in Toronto, Canada, this week.

Toronto was the first racecourse to adopt Trakus, which has transponders in the saddlecloths of the horses and antennae around the track collecting information to provide sectional times and paths in running and now even a cartoon representation of the race in real time.

Law firm partner Ken Wiener, who describes himself as a 'former handicapper' constrained by time nowadays, wrote: 'I can report that Trakus can provide important information to handicappers, although Woodbine has not done much of a job making it available to people. Trakus provides not only accurate fractional and final times for each horse but also a comparison of how much ground each horse has covered relative to the horse with the rail-skimming trip.

'At Woodbine, this information is flashed on the screen after each race but it is not included in past performance lines in the track programme or in the Daily Racing Form.

'I have no doubt the smart boys in the large betting syndicates in Hong Kong would love to have this level of information available. You would need a good computer programme to handle the data, given the large amount of information available.'