design choice: multi-threaded / asynchronous wxpython client?

[David]

>
>  1) The data for the race about to start updates every (say) 15
>  seconds, and the data for earlier and later races updates only every
>  (say) 5 minutes. There is  no point for me to be hammering the server
>  with requests every 15 seconds for data for races after the upcoming

Try using an HTTP HEAD instruction instead to check if the data has
changed since last time.