thorobase

thoroMotion is a multi-dimensional horse racing visualization tool. It allows you visualize how a race was run using just the official chart data. Here I describe why thoroMotion was built, how it works and how you will be able to use it.

Why is thoroMotion needed?

Thoroughbred horse racing has always been a very traditional sport; things tend to stay the same. I created thorobase to challenge this notion, to change the way handicappers, horse players and racing fans, of all ages and experience levels, interact with this great sport so that they may hopefully enjoy it even more.

I’d like to introduce to you a tool I developed that brings a completely new approach to understanding and analyzing a horse race – I call it thoroMotion.

This is the traditional racing result chart. It hasn’t changed for a very long time and every horse player who has ever wanted to look at horses’ previous racing performances in detail has encountered it at some stage.

Chart of 2000 Kentucky Jockey Club Stakes (copyright Equibase, BRIS)

The chart outlines the race details and conditions, the finishing positions of each horse plus the number of lengths either ahead or behind their nearest competitor at each point of call, along with some trip comments.

There are only 6 horses in this race, yet the horse player is still presented with a considerable amount of data to decipher. To emphasize this point, see how easily you can answer the following three questions:

• How did the race develop down the back stretch, between the quarter pole (2 furlongs) and the three-quarter pole (6 furlongs)?
• Who made the biggest move in the race?
• Dollar Bill “saved ground” for most of the race and rallied entering the stretch; who was he trying to catch?

I think you’ll see that, without being able to view a video of the race, it requires significant mental gymnastics and computation to truly get an good idea of how this race was run. thoroMotion solves this problem.

What exactly is thoroMotion?

The above chart is not an image, it is a live example of a thoroMotion of the 2000 Kentucky Jockey Club Stakes won by Dollar Bill. Press the “Play” button in the bottom-left to see it come to life and, just maybe, you’ll be able to understand it. If not, no problem, just keep reading!

thoroMotion is software based on the Motion Chart visualization tool from Google. It uses the information from an official chart data supplier and transforms it into a multi-dimensional dynamic animation. It can combine chart data with custom user-generated data, such as trip notes, to deliver an even richer handicapping analysis experience.

Let’s understand the structure of the thoroMotion chart.

The race area

This is the “race area” representing a top-down view of the track with the runners represented by colored bubbles.

The x-axis (“Lengths Behind”) is the number of lengths each horse is behind the leader.

So, the right edge of the area corresponds to the leader of the race, as the “Lengths Behind” figure for the leader is zero.

The y-axis (“Wide”) is the width from the rail – think of it like the running lane on an athletics track. This also means the x-axis doubles as the running rail because it’s lane 0 (zero) – isn’t that cool!

Right now all the runners are in a line on the lead (“Lengths Behind” is zero) and are spread out evenly across the lanes – that’s because they are in the starting gate! The “Wide” figure here corresponds to the post position.

Each bubble is a horse in the race

Each of the bubbles represent a horse in the race. They are initially ordered by post position.

You can see which bubble corresponds to which horse by hovering the mouse cursor over the bubble – the horse’s name will be displayed beside the bubble.

If you want to find a particular horse, hover the mouse over the “Select” list of horse’s names on the right of the chart, and the bubble will be highlighted on the chart.

When a horse/bubble has been highlighted, it will also highlight the relevant values on the x- and y-axes; in this example Dollar Bill is 0 (zero) lengths behind the leader.

Clicking on a bubble, or horse name(s) in the “Select” list, will keep the horse highlighted and make the other’s transparent – this is great if you want to keep track of certain runners.

The right-most digit is number of furlongs traveled; 10000 = 0 furlongs

At the bottom of the chart, we have the “playback” controls.

The horizontal bar represents “time/distance”. There is an outstanding bug that does not allow starting from 0 (zero), so we have to start at 10000.

All you need to focus on is the right-most digit, that represents the number of furlongs traveled – right now it’s 0 (zero), meaning the start of the race.

The “Play/Pause” button on the left starts, pauses and resumes the thoroMotion visualization. To the right of that is the “Speed Control” which determines the playback speed. You can drag the small white triangle up the horizontal lines to go faster (fastest playback speed is 10 seconds) and down to go slower (slowest is 40 seconds).

Change the shape and color of the bubbles to incorporate even more data.

There are even more dimensions we can use to represent extra relevant race data.

The user can change the size and color of the bubbles to incorporate information like:

* odds (for tracking favorites versus longshots), and

* post positions (for checking potential track biases).

By now you should have a good idea of what a thoroMotion visualization represents.

At any point of the race you can take in a massive amount of relevant information with just one look. Plus it’s animated so you can see how the race shape has evolved from start to finish.

I think this is an incredibly exiting tool to have for any horse player!

Let’s have one final example image. Before I explain what information is being displayed, try to understand it yourself by looking at the snapshot below and asking yourself questions like:

1. How many furlongs have been traveled? Who is just taking the lead?
2. How far behind the favorite is the 2nd favorite? (hint: the size of the bubbles equals odds)
3. If the color of the bubbles represent Post Position, and blue equals drawn closer to the rail, where are the horses that started from gates 1 and 2 racing on the track?
4. How far off the rail is Dollar Bill currently positioned? If it’s not a whole number, what do you think that means?
5. How far back from the leader is the last horse? Can you guess his odds? (hint: look towards “Odds” and consider the bubble size)

With one look you can instantly take in a huge amount of information!

Let’s answer these questions:

1. The field have traveled 5 of the 8.5 furlongs so far; you can tell because the “Playback Bar” is at 10005 – remember you just have to use the right-most digit.

Holiday Thunder is just taking the lead because he’s the one closest to the 0 (zero) “Lengths Behind” line to the right of the “race area”!

2. We can see that the “Size” parameter on the right has been set to “Odds”, so the smallest bubble will equal the favorite; that’s Holiday Thunder again. The next biggest bubble belongs to Dollar Bill, so that must mean he’s the second (2nd) favorite!

Both Dollar Bill and Holiday Thunder have been ‘checked’ in the “Select” list box on the right – that means we are just focusing on them so the other bubbles are a little more transparent. Also, Dollar Bill’s bubble has a yellow circle around it – that means we are currently hovering over it with the mouse. This highlights the appropriate values on the x- and y-axes.

Look down to the x-axis, that’s represents the number of lengths behind the leader. So now we can answer the second part of the question! The x-axis value highlighted is “-2.3″, which means Dollar Bill is 2.3 lengths behind Holiday Thunder right now!

3. Look to the top-right and the “Color” parameter; it’s set to “PP” for Post Position (the gate/starting-stall that the horse began the race from). If we know that blue means a lower PP number (i.e. began closer to the track’s running rail) and red means drawn widest of all, we can instantly identify where the horses that started from post positions 1 and 2 are now!

The deepest blue bubble must be PP #1 and he’s got a y-axis (“Wide“) value of 1, so he must be still in lane #1, right up against the running rail. The lighter-colored blue bubble is right beside him in lane #2.

You can infer from that that the rest of the field is going to have to come around them if they are going to win. Just one quick glance at thoroMotion, even when it’s paused, and you already have an amazing read on the race!

4. Let’s go back to Dollar Bill’s bubble. Before we looked down the the x-axis to find out how many lengths he was behind the leader. This time look all the way to the left y-axis to figure out how far off the rail he is – he’s in lane #1.5! But what does lane one-and-a-half mean?

This shows the power of thoroMotion. The data driving this visualization is the official chart data – the same data used to populate the chart at the top of the page. You can see that there wasn’t a point-of-call at 5 furlongs, but there was one at 4 furlongs (1/2 mile) and 6 furlongs (3/4 mile).

In this example I combined the official chart data with data from trip notes that detail how wide each horse was at each point-of-call. A lane of 1.5 means that Dollar Bill was making a move away from the rail between the half-mile and three-quarters pole (as you can see from the live thoroMotion above).

Why? Because there were 2 longshots (larger bubbles) that had raced on the rail (blue bubbles) all the way up to that point, remember?!? You can imagine that as they weakened, Dollar Bill had to be maneuvered off the rail to get around them to challenge.

5. By now you should be easily able to see that the horse in last position, the big pink bubble, is about 5 lengths from the lead.

We can guess his odds by looking over to the “Odds” parameter again; see the way it shows what the scale is underneath? If the highlighted Dollar Bill has odds of 2.3 (to a $1 bet), and the odds scale goes up to 10.3, we can figure out that the last horse has pretty much the biggest bubble and therefore must around the 10.3/1 odds mark!

If you have made it this far, well done! You should now have a decent grasp on how thoroMotion works and how powerful it can be.

Here’s the actual race video of the 2000 Kentucky Jockey Club Stakes so you can compare it to the visualization:

Why did I use the 2000 Kentucky Jockey Club Stakes as the example race? Because it is one of the races in the free sample Import Chart Result Data File downloaded from BRIS. In later posts I will show you how you can use results data purchased from data suppliers like brisnet.com with thoroMotion.

Right now, thoroMotion just supports the Import Charts data file structure. However, I’ve built an API that will allow developers to convert racing data from any data supplier to the format thoroMotion needs. This API will also be used for future projects here at thorobase.

What’s even better is that both the thorobase API and the thoroMotion code will be open-source software, so absolutely anyone can use this technology. My next few posts will show how you can build thoroMotions yourself, include them on any webpage and use other data sources, so stay tuned!

For now, I’d love to hear what people think and what they would like to see with thoroMotion next. Please leave a comment below, or on the thorobase Facebook page, or tweet me on Twitter, or even just email me. Thanks!