YOU can do just about anything on your phone these days, be it booking a flight to Barbados or watching TikTok videos from Texas.

But what about buying a micro share in a horse and having that horse’s heart rate, speed, velocity and stride length for every piece of work he or she does, mixed in with in depth feedback from your trainer, jockey and work riders.

This is what micro share owners in Sunday Racing horses will be able to do on a groundbreaking app which was launched this week.

“Informative content and Fitbit for horses,” was how Darren McGrath described the app’s main features, which have the aim of providing unique access to allow for an enhanced and more engaging ownership experience.

McGrath comes from a technology background and has always been a huge racing fan. He has combined his experience with his passion to put together Sunday Racing. Working with up-and-coming trainer Jack Davison, he has put in place all the ingredients for a completely new type of offering to prospective racehorse owners.

“We want to be able to give an owner or a syndicate member the type of content that they’re probably used to getting from different sports,” McGrath explains.

“We all watch the golf, the rugby, the premier league and we get all this data, insights and information and there’s no reason why you can’t actually get the same thing in terms of the horses that you own.

“We can provide every bit of information in relation to any of the training on the gallops that your horse does. It’s all about speed, velocity, acceleration, stride length, weight, fitness, heart rate.

“It’s very similar to Premier League players who you see wearing the GPS vests – it’s the same technology that we’ve built and integrated into the app. Jack is helping us turn it all into good content and bring everything to life to give owners something a little more tangible.”

McGrath says the content for owners on the app is more or less divided into two parts: the behind-the-scenes angle as described above and the raceday angle where content goes into overdrive.

“The excitement and the buzz that you get culminates on race day,” he added. “With technology now, it’s very easy to do a quick snippet on your mobile and trace every step of the journey.

“We will be doing before-and-after appraisals from Jack and the jockey. We upload it onto the app and each of the owners gets up-to-the-minute information on what is happening.”

The choice of Davison at the heart of the project is very much in line with the app, a new kid on the block. The Meath based-trainer has experience from racing jurisdictions around the world and this is his fourth year training. He looks set for his best return yet after another winner at Fairyhouse on Monday.

Davison explained: “I’ve been lucky enough to have the opportunity to travel around the world and I always felt that the ownership experience in Ireland was just lagging behind a little bit, probably because racing is quite a traditional sport here.

“When Darren rang me and told me about this idea, I was really on board with it. I think it’s fascinating stuff. I saw in America and even in England how tuned in trainers are to stride length and speed and how important that is, but also how interesting it is.

“I’m fascinated by it, why wouldn’t other people be? Not just people in racing but people who can relate to speed, stride length and velocity in other sports.”

Attracting a new base of sports fans who may not have experienced ownership or indeed racing at all is core to McGrath’s ambition.

“It’s for everyone who has any interest in racing really,” he explains. “But when we were building this product and conceptualising it, we had 25 to 35-year-olds as our bullseye.

“They are the people that at the minute can’t get into horse racing because it’s a life stage thing. You either have to get syndicates together or wait until you’re old enough and can afford to own a horse yourself.

“For people at that age, you get involved now and they can move up through the food chain with Sunday or own their own, as they get older. The whole point is to give them the opportunity to be able to see it and that’s why we invested the time and got some good people involved to build this product, bring it on to a handset and let people enjoy it.”

The app will be marketed in the coming weeks and McGrath says he has had great support from Horse Racing Ireland, The Irish Field and other organisations connected to racing.

The ambition is to grow continually to allow for reinvestment into the product and allow for more horses down the line.

McGrath concludes: “This is a very infectious sport and all we are trying to do is get it into people’s hands, and from there it has the potential to grow and grow. You saw with the myracehorse.com coup with Authentic winning the Kentucky Derby a couple of weeks ago, that this approach to share purchases has ended up right at the very top.

“The more people that get involved the better the story becomes. I think the industry is at a point where it’s ready for digital to create more demand.

“If we can get people who were never before involved in horse racing purchasing shares, we’re going to be building this team and we’re going to be investing as much as we can into more stock to go into Jack and for him to take us on this journey.

“There’s a huge opportunity there and the timing is right.”

How to get involved

THE app can be downloaded from app stores where you just search for ‘Sunday Racing’ and for €79 can buy a share in a Sunday horse. There are two remaining unraced two-year-olds available to purchase shares in – an Equiano filly named Sunday Style and a Make Believe filly named Sunday Special. Darren and Jack are looking to buy more yearlings this month to add to the team for next season.

Contact Darren at darren@sundayinteractive.com or on 086 8049927 if you’d like to learn more.