That terrible choice one must make at the end of the year…
I have two 4YO mares who did quite a bit of running this year but then tailed off during the summer. One hasn’t been back to the racetrack and the other just won her most recent race. I was dead set on retiring both to the broodmare band next year but now I’m not so sure, so I’d like some advice.
[color=red]A Dreamy Sonata is a turf miler. She was quite decent during the late winter/spring season but things went downhill, probably because I got too ambitious. She’s been at the farm since then and while I have the funds to ship her east for a race or two I’m not sure if it’ll be worth a try to at least get her a Champion ranking. I don’t know if she just peaked or if she just needed a long break and a smarter owner/trainer. Should I at least try to let her go out in style or no?
[color=red]Pink Slew is a horribly inconsistent dirt sprinter but she also earned me over $100k, the most of any of my runners this year. She also got her biggest winning SF figure in her last race, so I’m less certain about retiring her. Should I keep her in training next year (and manage her carefully) or bring her into the broodmare band?
Any and all opinions/advice is deeply appreciated.
[color=red]A Dreamy Sonata seems to be a Santa Anita horse. In both her 3yo & 4yo seasons, she seems to have a distinct liking for Santa Anita, which really limits her to racing from January to the end of March. You could bring her back to SA in the early part of the New Year and see how she does there then you could still retire her after that. The biggest drawback to that is that you’d end up paying Taxes on her twice at the end of next year, once as a Racehorse and once as a Broodmare.
As for Pink Slew, I would have said that she seems to like both of the California tracks, Santa Anita and Del Mar, however, she blew that theory out of the water by winning at Aqueduct last time out. Maybe give her a couple more races at Aqueduct before the end of the year then make your mind up about next year when you she how she does in those races.
I wasn’t aware that horses here can demonstrate affinities for racetracks like they do in real life coughcoughLavaMancoughcough If that’s the case I might take a shot at the SA races with Sonata - home base is a few miles from it so shipping isn’t the problem. Taxes, on the other hand…
Well, they don’t, in that each horse doesn’t have a “score” for each track or anything. Each track does have its own stats, though, as far as track width, length of the track, tightness of the turns, etc, so there could be a preference for a certain style of track. Or, y’know, it could just be random luck.
