New punting tool for Victorian country races

Punters will soon have a new tool to help with their betting on country races in Victoria.

Racing Victoria is adding sectional time information on all Victorian provincial meetings, the data provided by Daily Sectionals.

In confirming the new initiative, Racing Victoria chief executive Giles Thompson said the addition of sectional time data on country races was about expanding wagering on Victorian racing.

"We're working with Vince Accardi to deliver that and it forms part of our vision for Victoria," Anderson said.

"We'll be looking at providing the data as soon as possible for participants to access and see it as part of our mission to expand the wagering base in Victoria."

Thompson said Racing Victoria is anticipating the sectional data on provincial meetings to be available to punters as soon as September.

"It's important that we provide punters with as much information as possible to wager on racing in Victoria," Thompson said.

"This will also be rolled out on course and at our media channel at Racing.com for anyone to access it free of charge.

"Technology is not perfect and it's also extremely capital intensive which is why it (Trakus) has only been on the metropolitan tracks up to now.

"Right now Trakus is as good as there is but our indications are that there is something from them that is more robust and not too far away as opposed to the old version of Trakus."

The metropolitan sectional data is provided by Trakus however, there have been some issues with the US-based system in recent weeks.

Racing Victoria general manager racing Greg Carpenter said the Daily Sectionals data has been used by Racing Victoria in recent years to verify the times delivered by Trakus.

"We always use Vince's data as a starting tool to make sure the information we have is accurate," Carpenter said.

"We have been using Vince's data to verify the accuracy for over two years now and where there is an issue we investigate it.

"At all these non-metropolitan meetings the overall time will continue to be delivered on the day by the photo finish operator."

Carpenter said the anomalies with the Trakus data on the Quezette Stakes at Caulfield last Saturday won by Crown Witness are being investigated.

"As far as Caulfield is concerned on Saturday, Vince's times stack up with the Trakus data except for the Quezette Stakes," Carpenter said.

"As part of our normal process our IT team is checking the data from that race."