Questions: Times, tracks, positions
 

Sorry that I write in English, but I do not speak Swedish...

I have several questions to the experts:

1) I am working with the racing times. It is said, that auto start races are quicker than volt start races. But how much quicker is an auto start approximately? For example on 2.140 m distance?

2) It is important to me to know which tracks are the fastest. I read that Jägersro and Gävle are fast tracks. But is that true? And what about the others? Which tracks are slow?
Are there any statistics about it available?

3) How can I find out how quick a horse starts without watching every replay of it? Are there any statistics of the starting times or sectional times (as they are called in galop)?
I read that information about the horses positions were made by voltstart.se, but this website does not exist any more. Can I find this information somewhere else?

Thanks a lot for your help!

Greetings from Germany,
Swedish trotting is great stuff!!!

I don't know if Mikael Sandlin reads this forum, but time is his tour de force. You'll find him at speedanalysen. He's also on social media. A friendly guy, don't hesitate to contact him

His facebook:

facebook.com/Travkonsulten/

1: Normally a auto-start race is about 2 seconds faster per km, most of that comes from the first 500 meters due to a higher pace when passing the starting line.

2: The daily conditions is more important than the track itself. Rain, snow, wind, temperature and frozen tracks can really change the track conditions. And some horses don´t care about a hard frozen track, others will not accept it. The fastest track varies from year to year due to the trackmasters skill to prepare the track in a optional way. It´s often several years of preparation to get a really good and fast track.

3: We have no official starting times for individuals.

3) The paid service: www.travfakta.se

I understand exactly how you are thinking,
but analyzing times is a very difficult way to beat the trotters in Sweden.

I know you won't listen to me, but I know what I am talking about.
I have "been on that road" myself.

"You must stop looking for winners,
and start looking for value".

In handicapping these kind of races racing times is only a small factor. Why? There are so much tactics involved in swedish racing that time analysis focus oftentimes it will do you more harm than good.

I can second this. Due to factors like tactics and weather parameters it's not uncommon with a string of 5 races or more from a horse with misleadingly bad statisticd. And record times can be misleading as well. As a rule of thumb I never look at finishing time as significant in itself. Instead look at the races and see how that was in pace from start to finish, with the interval times (500/1000/finish) in relation to each other to determine the value of that acheivement by the horse.

Don't know what your hypothesis is. But if you are looking for a statistic model that weigh heavily on finishing times then it is oversimplifying and will lead to sub-optimizing.

Don´t give time comparison any considaration - it will only confuse you. Hell, even on the same track and competition day the times can screw you good, that because of weather condition that can vary so much in only a couple of races. A good track can often be a slow one a couple races later. This is due to good or bad tracks.

Färjestads track is one of the fastest ones in Sweden. Halmstad often have the best surface available due to excellent track-keepers!

In Jägersro the front-runners have an clear edge due to the last turn into the stretch - the leader horse often "gain" a length out of the last curve and the outside horses often drops a lenght or a half...

Theres also a big difference in how easy, or hard, it is to defend the inner rail, in autostart, between the different tracks... Here also the length of the race is important.

Your qustions doesn´t have easy answers...

In swedish trotting you also have to have in considorating that many of the drivers are friends. Thats not a good thing, but you can draw conclusions from it and therefore gain an extra edge when analyzing the races outcome. As in every country the big stables often have more than one horse in a race and "friendly competion" are common, even tough they would never admitt to that!

Thank you very much for all your interesting answers!!

I have contacted Mikael Sandlin, he thinks auto starts are about ~0,5 seconds faster than volt starts.

I would like to write something positive about racing times:
I am actually betting gallop races since many years. When Corona started last year, Sweden was the only country to host horse races, so I got interested in Swedish trotting. And I am still well into it, because of the racing times.

In the USA the so called ‘speed figures’ are standard in gallop and are used by all experts and newspapers. The reason why they work well is that the US dirt tracks have almost all the same form and length. The same is true for Scandinavian trotting tracks!!
This makes them pretty much comparable. Of course there are differences in the conditions, weather, time of the year and so on. But if you look on the last 20-30 races of a horse, you can get a rough idea on its capability by observing its racing times.
Once I have done that, I know which horses are the best, if they all would have their best form.

So you could now say, that’s never the case. But I don’t care. I am looking for underestimated horses I can use for the Trio (trifecta). And as two or three horses are normally get disqualified in every race and the form of a horse is not really predictable, it works quite well over a long time.

There are a lot of things that don't transfer well from gallop to harness racing and vice versa ( which in fact is why I am totally un-fascinated by betting on gallop ).

The significance of times is one of those major ones.

And about auto vs volt. In different classes this difference will be different.

Of course it is up to you to decide for yourself. We are only trying to save you time by not pursueing something that will not work.

No long term winning punter on swedish harness racing lets times be anything more than a minor factor in their handicapping.


You talk about getting a rough idea...and that is my point exactly. What you can get from time analysis in swedish harness racing is dwarfed by many other factors. And those "times" when times in fact tell you something significant about the difference in capacity...you might as well just look at the betting distribution.

Or put in a shorter way: There is too much noice in the time analysis of nordic harness racing for there to be any value to be extracted.


And also, tracks are much more different than you might think. Some wear the hoofs down more than others which makes shoe or shoeless racing very different from track to track. And the list goes on and on!

The tracks are not as similar as you might think. The surface are different in every track. It differs in many ways; the material, how much water it can hold or let thru. How the material makes the track hard or soft when it rains or when its cold. How the personnel "harvest" the track, what instruments they use. If they add or subtract more gravel/material. Then you have the dosage of the curves (Don´t know if this is the right words) - someones got a lot which makes it easier for the horses to trott, and someones doesn`t have nearly anything of the sort.

You could write a book about how you can´t or shouldn´t compare tracks and the times sat in the different races...

But good luck, if you continue with your endeavour...

Don't know who Sandlin is but if that is what he says he obviously don't know what he is talking about. Anyone with no prior knowledge can see this is false in 30 seconds. Just look up any horse with a decent amount of starts and compare volt to auto start records.

You ask questions and then seem to disregard all the answers given when making your summary here. Except for the false one that came from somewhere else. Why do you even ask? If you want to make it simple and say that US galopp and Swedish trotting is basically same thing. And condense your betting decisions to times then go ahead. It's your money.