Win By A Short Head – How Is That Measured
After our 4th winner in a row today ‘Dandino’ in the Newmarket group 2 stakes. I always wondered where the term winning or losing by a ’short head’ came from, because it’s a widely used horse racing term.
Also is it an official measurement, and if so what is it?
Well is seems that the term is more descriptive than an actual measurement.
Obviously horse’s heads are different sizes so it would be difficult to pin it down to a measurement.
Before official distances and the equipment to measure them became available, there had to be a way to describe how horses fared against each other in a race.
A ‘Short head’ was one of these phrases originating back to 1898 in Briticism.
The distance less than the length of a horse’s head.
In other words a very short distance, depending on the size of the horse’s head of course.
In fact looking again at the official winning distance of Dandino’s win today, it seems they have described it as a ‘nose’.
So moving over to modern spread betting it seems this is the official distance measured by length.
Nose = 0.05 of a length
A short head = 0.10 of a length
A head = 0.20 of a length
A neck = 0.30 of a length
Half a length and three quarters of a length are self explanatory 0.50 & 0.75 respectively.
Anyway in short, it was close, but still another winner!