Discover the staggering statistic behind Pic D'Orhy's Ascot demolition job in our illuminating new data feature

For the last 15 months or so, RaceIQ have been quietly making headlines by trying, and occasionally appearing to solve, one of racing's longest-running conundrums. How much do good jumpers gain, and how much ground does a mistake cost?

Tracking data has made this breakthrough possible. By taking the speed a horse loses as it approaches an obstacle, and measuring how long it takes to regain its speed afterwards, you can put a time value on how much a good jump gains or a poor one loses. And because lengths are just a slightly fancy measure of the time between horses, this value can be converted into a scale that makes intuitive sense to punters.

A lot of the time, the 'lengths gained jumping' metric tells you much the same as your eyes would have. But that also goes for the other darling of dataheads, sectional times.