RaceTech’s long-standing relationship with horse racing in the United Kingdom (UK) has played a massive role in promoting the sport to a wider audience.

The London-headquartered company’s passion for innovation is at the centre of its remarkable growth over the years, and it is showing no signs of slowing down.

RaceTech recently took another huge step towards redefining UK horse racing coverage by introducing a series of groundbreaking camera innovations.

This latest development will likely attract admiring glances from broadcasters overseas, whose coverage often takes inspiration from RaceTech’s innovations.

RaceTech’s Camera System Will Fire Racing Coverage into Another Stratosphere

RaceTech’s Across the Line’ camera system was developed from the equipment traditionally used in crash tests and is placed right across the finish line.

The idea is to capture detailed footage of horses crossing the finish line in slow motion at 1,000 frames per second. The camera is automated and does not require any human involvement.

It delivers the footage within 15 seconds, which will then be shown to viewers as part of the live footage. It will help officials accurately call the winner of a tight race.

RaceTech has also introduced drone footage to capture all the live action across racecourses. Taking into account the limited geographical range of drones, RaceTech have moved their operators into mobile vehicles that follow the race.

This ensures the drone is always in range and can keep the fans up to speed regardless of the length of the racecourse. Larger racecourses such as Newmarket and Ascot can now enjoy full aerial coverage for the first time.

Another innovation RaceTech recently introduced is the stables handler cam. The tech is still in the trial phase, but it will provide a unique insight into pre-race preparations.

The system delivers up-close footage of the start of the race when horses are being led into the starting stalls, which was previously unavailable.

RaceTech took things up a notch by adding audio clips for a more immersive peek behind the scenes, where viewers can also listen to handlers talk to their horses and jockeys in the build-up to the race.

Australian Broadcasters Take Inspiration from RaceTech

Widely viewed as one of the leading innovators in racing coverage, it is little wonder that many of RaceTech’s ideas inspire improvements in other jurisdictions.

These include Australia, where broadcasters Racing.com are among a plethora of companies offering extensive coverage of the Sport of Kings.

The collaborated last year with Gravity Media to broadcast the Royal Ascot meeting, and a sizeable proportion of their coverage centred around the international feed provided by RaceTech.

The partnership brought UK racing closer to Aussie fans than ever before, and inevitably triggered a spike in activity on online betting platforms.

This forced the best betting apps in Australia to ramp up their coverage of Royal Ascot and has had a knock-on effect to other UK meetings since then.

Racing.com have also taken inspiration from RaceTech’s innovations and are working towards integrating them into their coverage of Australian horse racing.

This serves to strengthen RaceTech’s position as a global leader when it comes to implementing innovative ideas in horse racing coverage.

RaceTech Will Continue to Keep Raising the bar for UK Racing

RaceTech produces live horse racing content for over 1,500 races every year and has done business with major rights holders such as ITV Racing, Sky Sports Racing and The Racing Partnership.

Aside from the role it plays in the broadcast sector, integrity services, archive management and on-course productions are also part of the comprehensive services the company offers year-round.

RaceTech is no stranger to innovation in horse racing broadcast tech. They developed their first ever photo-finish camera back in the 1940s and supplied racing’s first high-definition scanners in 2010, so they are familiar with the inner workings of the industry.

Next on the company’s to-do list is expanding its facility in Raynes Park to six production galleries, a master control room and two replay rooms.

RaceTech is keen to switch things up by handling productions remotely to increase efficiency and allow them to provide more scalable broadcasting solutions.

“We are talking to the other rights holders about bringing them on that remote production journey with us,” RaceTech chief executive officer John Bozza said.

“The spare gallery we’ve got is actually the biggest, and it could be used for a number of different things. It could be dedicated to a larger race meeting, or it could be used for another sport.”

Of course, the Cheltenham Festival is shaped around the four, key ‘showpiece’ races, culminating with the ‘Blue Riband’ event, the Cheltenham Gold Cup, on the fourth and final day. However, those races, and the other Graded and Listed events staged throughout the week, are interpersed with a series of notoriously competitive handicaps, of which the County Hurdle is arguably the most impenetrable of all.

Historically the ‘getting-out stakes’ – it was, until 2009, the final race of the Festival – the County Hurdle has lost none of its allure, as a betting medium, for being rescheduled ahead of the Cheltenham Gold Cup, as the second race on day four. Willie Mullins, the most successful trainer in the history of the Cheltenham Festival, has been the man to follow in recent years, with five winners in the last ten runnings. Indeed, Mullins was reponsible for the only winning favourite in the last decade, State Man in 2022, but with winners at 33/1 (three times), 25/1, 20/1 and 12/1 (twice) in the same period, the County Hurdle remains, largely, a race for the bookmakers.

Unsurprisingly, the bookmakers bet 7/1 the field, ante-post, which brings in McLaurey, owned by J.P. McManus and trained by Emmet Mullins, who won a valuable Listed handicap at Leopardstown in early February. Salvador Mundi, who finished sixth in the Triumph Hurdle at the 2024 Cheltenham Festival, is the shortest-priced of Mullins’ entries, at 9/1, while, at longer cheltenham festival betting odds, handicap debutante Celtic Dino (16/1), trained by Sam Thomas, makes no little appeal for the home team.

Cheltenham Festival 2025 Free Bet Offer:  https://blog.betway.com/horse-racing/countdown-to-cheltenham-earn-over-pound100-in-free-bets-1/

The history of horse racing in, or around, the market town of Stamford, in Lincolnshire, can be traced back to March 7, 1619, with the inaugural running of the principal race of the day, the Guilded Cup, later the Stanford Gold Cup, on Wittering Heath, south of the town. Nearly a century later, in 1717, Stamford Racecourse was relocated further north, but still on the Burghley Estate, to the west of the village of Easton-on-the-Hill, where it would remain until its final meeting on July 25, 1873.

The original course was an oval, approximately a mile and a quarter in extent but, in 1818, under the auspices of Brownlow Cecil, Second Marquess of Exeter, it was extended westward by the creation of a straight mile course. Two years later, the majority of the racecourse was railed, rather than roped, in and a new entrance was created. Indeed, the straight mile course is still visible, south of the aptly-named Racecourse Road in Easton-on-the-Hill and part of the grandstand, built in 1766, still stands, albeit that it was converted to a residential dwelling in 1994.

Stamford Racecourse continued to prosper throughout the nineteenth century, thanks in no small part to the arrival of the railway in Stamford in1846. However, the death of the Second Marquess on January 16, 1867 signalled the beginning of the end for Stamford Racecourse; his eldest son, William Alleyne Cecil, the Third Marquess, withdrew permission for his land to be used for horse racing and, by 1875, the once hallowed turf had been returned to the plough. Interestingly, the last ever winner at Stamford Racecourse was ridden by a youthful Fred Archer, a.k.a. ‘The Tin Man’, who would go on to become champion jockey for the next 13 years running.

Built on the site of the former Essex County Showground, just north of the village of Great Leighs in the City of Chelmsford district of Essex, Great Leighs Racecourse was the first new racecourse in Britain for 81 years when it fully opened to the public for the first time on May 28, 2008. However, having already missed its original opening date by 18 months, due to a series of delays, Great Leighs was beset by financial problems and staged its final fixture on January 15, 2009.

Great Leighs had been operating under a series of temporary licences but, reportedly motivated by concerns about financial viability, the British Horseracing Authority (BHA) declined an application for a further licence and the racecourse went into adminstration just eight months after its first fixture.. The following year, course chairman John Holmes was declared bankrupt, owing £25 million, and had two properties repossessed by Chelmsford County Court.

In December, 2013, news emerged that the hitherto ‘mothballed’ racecourse had been taken over by Great Leighs Estates Limited, a consortium led by Fred Done, owner of bookmaker Betfred, and renamed Chelmsford City. In its new guise, Chelmsford City Racecourse was granted permission to enter the fixture allocation process for 2015 by the BHA and was duly awarded 58 fixtures, the first of which, fully open to the public, was staged on February 1, 2015.

Following initial criticism regarding ‘kickback’ – that is, dislodged track surface flying into the faces of trailing horses – the Polytrack surface was rewaxed, at a cost of £200,000, and Chelmsford City has continued to flourish ever since. In 2023, the course was allocated 45 afternoon, evening and floodlit fixtures throughout the year, with seasonal highlights including the Cardinal Stakes, the Queen Charlotte Stakes and the Weatherbys Chelmsford City Cup.