We have two Breeders’ Cup Classic winners as Famous Stallions in the game: American Pharoah and Gun Runner. In Final Furlong, two years ago the winner was NCh. Bele and he’s entered in the Classic again! Meanwhile he finished 2nd in Pegasus World Cup. Bele will run against GCh. Northern Invasion who won the race last year. Northern Invasion finished 2nd in last year’s Pegasus World Cup, in which GCh. Local Haunt was the winner. He is also entered in the Classic for tomorrow. That will be one interesting race!
GCh. Daiquiri, last year’s winner of Breeders’ Cup Distaff, is entered in this race again. Ch. Kiss The Fool, the winner of Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Fillies, is now entered in Breeders’ Cup Dirt Mile. She will run against GCh. Cop in Morgue, the stud qualified colt that almost won the Triple Crown this year.
Of other real life winners on dirt, City of Light - the Mile winner - joined Final Furlong as a Famous Stallion. Monomoy Girl is one of the top contenders for Distaff; she won it as a 3yo.
Turf
The queen of the turf, Enable, is now retired. In Final Furlong, the Breeders’ Cup Turf winner was GCh. In The Stars and he’s entered in this race again; along with stablemate NCh. Never Let Go, who finished 2nd last year. Among real life contenders is Sistercharlie, the winner of Filly & Mare Turf; she may run in this race again two years later.
In Final Furlong, the Breeders’ Cup Turf Sprint winner GCh. Frankstown Spring is now entered in this race again. GCh. Aria, the Breeders’ Cup Mile winner, will also try to repeat her success.
Steeplechase
GCh. Vague Writer will run in Breeders’ Cup SC Endurance; last year he finished 2nd, behind Ch. Doodles Red who is now entered in SC Sprint. NCh. Unequalled Flight, the 2020 Steeplechase Mare and double winner of SC Distaff, will try to win this race third time in a row. GCh. Unimpeded will run again in SC Distaff Endurance; she won it last year and finished 2nd two years ago; beating Ch. Seattle Wind who will try to take away her victory tomorrow.
I’ve been trying not to get my hopes up, but it’s hard not to get excited. This is my 3rd year participating in the BC and my largest group of runners. No matter the results, though, I’m looking forward to seeing the results tomorrow. Best of luck to everyone!
We had our first BC winner in FF2013 and actually had 12 winners in FF2019, but, still get excited when these races come around. We have 10 runners, probably our smallest batch of runners in many years, and figure that we’ve got each way chances with many of them.
Good luck to everybody and may your horses all come second to ours. LOL!
In RL, I’ve admittedly not been following this year. But I am curious to see a Tiz the Law vs. Maximum Security matchup in the Classic, and I’m curious to see where Swiss Skydiver goes. The Mile might be the most intriguing race, though.
I haven’t kept up with racing almost at all this year (not even sure where this year went), but looking through the lists on the BC website…
The Classic alone is gonna be a show! I’m a sucker for Tiz the Law, mostly because I am a Funny Cide fan and, after reading the book about Funny Cide, I always get stupidly excited when I hear names I recognize. Silly, but true. There are a lot of good names in that race, though.
Also a huge fan of Monomoy Girl, who’s showing up on the Distaff list along with Swiss Skydiver, another favorite.
Civil Union and Mean Mary look pretty sharp for the Filly & Mare Turf, though there are a lot of names there I haven’t researched yet.
Really liking Frank’s Rockette in the Filly & Mare Sprint.
Not familiar yet with the names in any of the other races.
I don’t know about a secret😂
Think I’ve been very fortunate over the last few seasons with the stakes horses.
Looking at some of my older top performers (6yo+) are past their best and my younger horses don’t look anywhere near as good. So I’m enjoying the great run but have a feeling we may struggle in the next few seasons??
In my early seasons playing the game, I used to run them too often and trained them too hard. Nearly packed the game in after 3 or 4 seasons. But bought/claimed a few from some of top stables. In particular stables that had regular fast time winners(Fast opening sectionals). Looked at how they had been trained and rested in between races. All horses are different but after changing the training schedules and resting between races my results improved (as did my horses early sectional times). Downside of this the horses don’t run that many times a season. But started winning stakes races more regularly and our OTB numbers were much better…
Most of my best horses are ones I’ve bought rather than bred. I always buy based on pedigree and the expected level G1 or G2. Breeding rank of P or G on sire/dam or both are ideal types.
I don’t tend to over race the 2yos, just try and get jockey and equipment sorted and try and plan more in their 3yo campaigns.
Be very interested to hear other players thoughts on the buying, training and how often their horses race.
I really enjoy playing and couldn’t wait to see how we’d done today
Just like to say what a great job Shanthi does running this great game.
Just looking through the winners, there were a couple of notables:-
Frankstown Spring (Turf Sprint) and Unequalled Flight (SC Distaff) who were both winning their respective races for the 3rd year running.
Aria (Mile) and Fractal (Distaff) who were winning their respective races for the 2nd time, Aria last year and Fractal in 2022.
Doodles Red (SC Sprint) won the SC Endurance in 2023 (from one extreme to the other).
Vague Writer (SC Endurance) was 3rd in that race in 2022 and 2nd in the race last year. Definitely improving with age.
I was looking at the Qualifier’s lists for each race. Only 4 winners were top ranked, 4 were ranked #2, 2 were ranked #3 and 2 were ranked #4. 5 winners were ranked 10 or above, including 2 outside the top 14. One winner, Barolia in the Dirt Mile, wasn’t on the final list for that race at all.
Owners winning more than one race were Littlefield with 6 (including 4 of the 5 SC races), Sakura Springs with 4 and Black Storm West with 2.
HIghlighting the huge variety of Stallions in the game, only two Stallions had more than one winner, Changeling (Fractal and Crown of Oak) and Frankel (Whats My Scene and Frankstown Spring). I remember years when most of the winners were sired by only a few Stallions.
Powerful Soul is the only male winner to be close to becoming Stud-Qualified, just needing one more SP of any grade. Guill has 5 SW and 4 SPs so only needs 2 more SW of any grade.
Two male winners have previously qualified, Local Haunt and Vague Writer.
♂
