4Racing will use the race meeting at Turffontein on Thursday 28 July to do a final round of testing for an in-race speed tracking system aimed at providing richer race data for form studiers and enhancing the 4RacingTV live broadcast experience.

The system will provide race data such as sectional timing, live speed, horse position during races and fastest acceleration. The data will be utilised during local racing’s live broadcasts, as well as being made available to racing industry stakeholders online.

4RacingTV has already carried out initial tests of the Finnish GPS-based Traxmeet system at Turffontein Racecourse, in the presence of the National Horseracing Authority (NHA).

Trainers Joe Soma, Paul Peter and Robyn Klaasen and jockeys Gavin Lerena and Jeffrey Syster assisted with the initial tests and confirmed there was no hindrance to the jockey or horse.

4RacingTV has now sought to obtain the support of a wider range of jockeys and trainers, to carry out the more extensive test under race conditions at Turffontein on 28 July.

“4Racing’s ongoing efforts to improve and modernise South African horse racing by adding leading digital technology is ready for the next step by introducing the testing of this in-race tracking system. 4Racing believes the implementation of this system, which has already been approved in and is being used in Scandinavia, will be a huge positive development for SA racing and we look forward to working with all industry stakeholders to take horseracing to the next level,” said head of 4RacingTV, Stephen Watson.

“We have been evaluating two systems used abroad to bring sectional timing, speed and position data to SA Racing. Like many international racing jurisdictions, this data should be included in our live broadcast feeds and be made available for download online post-race. The test this week will allow us to complete the final data accumulation tests in full race conditions, with all data being pushed directly into our cloud environment on the fly. We will not be publishing/broadcasting the live data to broadcast in this first full race test, but based on its success, this will follow shortly after if we are satisfied with both the data integrity and other factors like latency and API flows. We will however publish and provide the data to racing stakeholders and engage them on this,” Watson added.

4Racing will host a briefing session at Turffontein, open to anyone wishing to attend, at 10h00 on Thursday, 28 July, to showcase this tracking system.

4 Racing PR