Our recent reporting of the death of the dead-heat appears to have been greatly exaggerated.
When the Melbourne Cup photo finish was enlarged sufficiently to find a pixel in favour of Dunaden over Red Cadeaux, we suggested in this column that we might have seen the end of the dead-heat now that technology allows photos to be worked on until a winner is found, even if it that might be a 1,000th of a length margin.
And we are sticking with that when it comes to Melbourne Cups, but some are wondering if perhaps the Hong Kong Jockey Club's finish equipment is lagging behind that of the Victoria Racing Club, or even some other racing organisations in the world that have reportedly found a pixel as a margin of separation.
Three dead-heats have occurred in a week in Hong Kong, by no means impossible in the general run of things under old photo-finish technology, but indicating the whole drilling-down-into-the-enlarged-pixel thing either isn't going to apply to anything but big-race winners here or that it doesn't apply in Hong Kong at all.
It clearly isn't happening in big races for placings - dead-heats in the Hong Kong Vase for third and in the Hong Kong Sprint for second make that abundantly clear.
And if it doesn't apply for the minor placings in those big races, then it follows the prospect of a dead-heat for first in Group Ones remains as strong as ever. The second scenario, the pixel magnifier doesn't come out at all, would back the view Hong Kong is dropping behind in such technical niceties despite the booming turnover figures.
