Inspired by @Hilda_with_Clicker’s topic last year around this time where I greatly enjoyed reading about everyone’s FF year I thought it’d be fun to reflect on 2028 and look ahead to the year of racing that is 2029.
In 2027, Gotapa ended with horses hitting the track 723 times with an OTB of 58%. As that OTB was a slight setback from 2026, this year I really focussed on finding the right races for horses. I also did a lot more last minute entering, giving horses that I felt needed a confidence booster a smaller field to run against to feel what it was like in the winners circle. It paid off in 2028 as our fourth year of Final Furlong will go in the books as the most succesful one so far with 827 races, a winners ratio of 36% and an OTB ratio of a whopping 71%. Additionally, we made 15,5 million - as much as our first three race years combined.
I had a significant lull in activity over the summer and thus lots of horses benefitted from an unplanned 3-4 month rest period. My focus on winning percentages also meant that I was less active in stakes races in the first half of 2028, which, looking back, wasn’t the best for some of our horses.
In 2028 the first Gotapa homebreds also hit the track! I made the rookie mistake of sending them off to the track for training too soon and discovered in April when races started that most of them had not grown into their projected heights yet. It led to a crop that was wildly succesful in their first races (probably because they’d trained more than anyone) with varying levels of succes after and lots of them had to go back to the barn for months to grow some more. We ended the year with a crop of 27 with 24 winners and 6 stakes winners.
As for standouts, we admittedly profited from smaller BC and BS fields. Homebred Antari took home two BS races and became my first MSW homebred ever. Ch. Pugilist won the Breeders’ Cup Mile on turf and had a stellar year in general. Some of the standouts from 2027, mostly Solid Sun and Golden Chrome continued to perform solidly in 2028. We also had 17 horses win a single stakes this year, so hopefully there are a few in there that will continue to run well in stakes in 2029.
I’m still working towards campaigning our first GCh. from NW1 to title and definitely don’t have any significant stallion prospects to speak of yet. I’m very happy with the increasing quality of my horses though, so some day we’ll get there. I hope that everything will continue to go well in 2029 and who knows, with my increasing wallet I might just be able to snatch up a stallion if one ever comes up for sale or auction and explore that part of the game too.
Thank you all for yet another fun year in the game! For all it’s ups and downs and unplanned bugs, I still have a lot of fun playing. Happy new year to you all and good luck with FF in 2029! 
