I’m a newer player here and I’ve been reading the forum posts, FAQs along with the newbie guide. I’m looking for some guidance on how frequent you can safely race your horses. I know never to run your horses on ‘F’ energy etc. My farm is located 5 miles from Belmont and Aqueduct. Recently, I’ve started shipping my horses home right after races and letting them recover there. Only shipping them back to the track about 4 days before racing to get a couple workouts in or a tune up breeze to get them sharp before race day. I’ve noticed that the horses recover much faster while at home, some of them back at A energy with A Fitness in as little time as 4-5 days post race. Can I race them that soon again or should I still be waiting the standard 10-14 waiting period ? Are they able to race a bit more frequent since they recover and spend most of their ‘down time’ at home ? I would appreciate any comments or advice that anyone has on this! *Side Note: I’ve never raced a horse that wasn’t at ‘A’ energy or ‘A’ fitness. Also after workouts never seen my horses lower than ‘D’ energy but usually just at ‘B’, while recovering back to ‘A’ overnight even from the ‘D’ energy status.
If they’re recovered, they should be safe to race – I believe that injuries are tied to those fitness/energy stats and track condition.
That being said, training seems to provide a positive effect on their performance in races (or at least my ponies perform better if they’ve had some training between races).
I also try to get at least 2 weeks of training under a horse before entering, but some horses just work differently. I’m mostly thinking of Cricket Hill’s Palermo who managed to rattle off wins with like 1 week breaks between them. I can safely say none of mine have managed such a trick, though! I definitely race at A/A energy, 2 weeks of races, and I try and send horses home every 3-4 months for at least 2 months (Shanthi has said that 1 month at the farm is more than enough). Right after a race, I don’t work them for about 3-4 weeks as a sort of rest/down period to recover E/F. Stakes runners I might board for 7-11 days after a race as a quicker energy boost, but just not working them and saving myself the boarding $$ seems to work well, too.
I am constantly tweaking how I handle my horses, but 2 weeks training before a race, A/A for energy/fitness, and sending home every 3-4 months is fairly standard for me.
Thanks for asking this, Nicole11–I was wondering about this too. I still am trying to get some consistency to how often I send mine home and then to race and am struggling a bit–I think right now I have 2 horses on A/B right now with B for fitness and I’m picturing them just huffing and puffing trying to keep up because they’ve spent so long getting fat on grass lol I’m hoping they’re still alright. I think I’ll have to tweak this a bit more.
Also meant to add: when I first started playing I used races to keep horses fit, so I did race at A/B and managed a few stakes winners. But I still made sure that energy was A, though. I’ve just had better luck with longer breathers/more training and only entering at A/A.
Then again, the ponies occasionally decide this racing thing is silly and it’s much more fun to lag behind and snack along the way.
