Oxford will have a standard race distance of 450 metres and a stayers trip of 650m when the track re-opens for trials on Tuesday writes Floyd Amphlett.
Confused? You might be.
The standard trip is ‘apparently’ identical to what it was previously. The sprint trip is now 253m, compared to the old 250m. The old 645m distance has increased by five metres. The old circumference was officially 395m but is now 397m. The increase appeared inevitable given the inside rail has been slightly moved. In addition, tapes on the track showing the location of the old and new winning lines are almost two metres apart.
So what can we deduce?
The only possibility is that the old circuit was either incorrectly measured or recorded. For many years, the only measuring device was a surveyors wheel, trundled around the track one metre from the inside rail. Unfortunately, given they were operating on sand, they had limited accuracy. As a result, the results usually varied and a ‘best of three’ approach was often taken. In recent times, GBGB have insisted on modern technology.
Dave Boothby said: “We used a wheel originally at Towcester and never got two results the same. The surveyor used two methods when he was here (at Oxford) this week. They use prisms to triangulate the distance and then confirm it with GPS. We are using the same stands as before so the traps won’t have moved. The old distances have to be wrong.”
Allow two metres for the increased circumference and two metres for the winning line and the original distances should have been 446m and 646m.
(Your Honour I would argue that my strong finisher actually won the race over the distance that was advertised! My bet won too!)
Some comparative distances: 382m-Yarmouth, 385m-Kinsley, Poole-390m, 395m-Belle Vue, 397m-Oxford, Wimbledon-414m, Newcastle-415m, Monmore-419m.
