Sectionals side by side: three ways to compare on RaceMetrics
A member asked us this week how to see sectional times with races side by side. There are three ways to do it on RaceMetrics, depending on what you want to compare, and all of them start from the racecard.
1. One horse, every run
Open any race and click a horse's row: its form lines open underneath. In the Race column heading there is a small Sectionals button. Click it and the columns switch to the sectional figures for every run: the race pace, the horse's running style and position through the race, finishing speed at two furlongs out, one out and the line, the upgrade in pounds, and stride length and cadence where the run was tracked.
Each race sits under the one before, so you can read down a column and see whether a horse finishes its races the same way every time, or only when the pace suits. Click Show all for the horse's full history. The Sectionals choice is remembered as you move from horse to horse.
2. The whole field
To compare every runner at once, open the Sectional Profile tab on the racecard. Each horse gets one row, taken from its last race of the same type (its last all-weather run for an all-weather race, its last chase for a chase): average stride length in feet, cadence in strides a second, its longest single stride, finishing speed against its own average for that race, and how it usually runs. Click a runner to open its stride chart, furlong by furlong through that race.
3. Two races, furlong by furlong
To compare two whole races, open Race Compare, in the menu beside Sectionals. In the video we line up two races over a mile and a half at Kempton on 5 September 2026: the September Stakes, a Group 3, and a Class C handicap later on the card.
The first race is the benchmark. Every runner from both races is ranked over the same stretch of ground, and any handicapper that ran within a length of a Group horse is picked out, with the horse it matched and where that horse finished. From a mile and three furlongs out, Tiernan, second in the handicap off a mark of 85, was half a length quicker than the Group 3 winner Pride Of Arras, and the handicap's first and third, Primo Lara and Elsass, were both quicker than Constitution Hill, fourth in the Group race.
Choose the marker to start the clock from, and switch the chart under the list between furlong times, the running gap in lengths, and pace against par. A check above the list says whether the two races are like for like: course, day, going, and how each was paced.
Who can use it
All three come with the Sectionals add-on, on top of RaceMetrics Pro or Proform Premium. For a guide to every sectional figure and the other videos in the series, see the sectionals guide.