What makes HRP unusual — and, in its own way, precious — is that it has never just been a game. It has been a place where people grew up, grew older, changed careers, raised families, lost people, found new routines, and kept showing up anyway. We’ve argued like siblings, competed like rivals, and bonded like old workmates who never quite leave the job behind. And through all of that, the constant has been this strange, stubborn little world of virtual horses that somehow kept us connected.

As the years pass, the community inevitably thins. Some drift away quietly. Some leave with a final forum post. And some… we learn later will never be logging in again. Those losses hit harder than we expect, because even if we never met them, we knew them — through their horses, their writing, their quirks, their rivalries, their humour, their frustrations, their triumphs. They were part of the rhythm of the place.

So it feels right — necessary, even — to pause and acknowledge them. To celebrate the stables that once filled our screens, the names that once filled our racecards, the voices that once filled our forums. They shaped the game as much as any update or mechanic ever did. They shaped us, too, in ways we only notice when they’re gone.

This community has always been more than the sum of its arguments and its egos. It has been a long-running conversation between people who might never have crossed paths otherwise — people from different countries, different generations, different politics, different everything — held together by a shared affection for something that most of the world doesn’t understand.

And when someone from that conversation leaves us for good, the least we can do is remember them. Not with sorrow alone, but with gratitude for the time they spent here, the horses they campaigned, the stories they added to the tapestry, and the small but real ways they made HRP what it is.

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Here are a few of the people that have been confirmed to me as having left this world.

Tinkey

I first came across Tinkey at the free tracks when I first started playing. In 2007 he made contact to congratulate me on a win, and we talked back and forth until 2024. We didn’t talk again after that, I wish we had but it didn’t occur to me that his time was limited by his illness, you think we will all be there tomorrow until we aren’t.

Tinkey as we all know had a brother that plays and that brother is Tommy from TwinTowersRacing. The two of them played very different games but both had one thing in common, their faith. That faith leads me to hope and believe that Dom has found a space in his heaven and will be looking down on BEL day to see if Tommy can do the impossible.

Tinkey started playing in 2003, he finished his first season with a very respectable 4 wins from 15 races and would go on to compete in 16990 races winning 3265 of them for a very decent win percentage of 19.2%. He was predominantly a free track player but did dabble in the pay side and managed to pick up a very good filly called Always A Virgin that between the years of 2022 and 2024 won Tinkey’s only three graded stakes including a grade one which I know was a big thrill for him. I know it gave him even more of a thrill that he bred the filly himself although he never divulged to me how he decided on the name!

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Sanny Village

I didn’t know Will from Sanny Village as well as I would have liked, we corresponded a little over the years, but we never had the sort of relationship he had with others. For this reason, I would like to thank Dom from DJC Racing Stables for the following that he sent me via mail.

The game lost a great one when Will or as everyone knew him as Sanny, who ran Sanny Village, passed away. My first encounter with Sanny was out of the blue, I received a site mail telling me I was selling a few horse way too cheap and he tried to explain to me the workings of the game. I was a former real life racehorse owner (on a small scale) and was not used to the game at the time he contacted me. He gave me great advice and then we found out we lived only 5 miles apart from each other and struck up a friendship beyond the game itself. We met up for lunch one day, discussed our lives and found out he had a bad ticker for a young guy and wanted to own a racehorse before his time ran out. I joined him on a trip to the Saratoga horse sales where we met up with Nightmare stable, (Michele) who lived in Saratoga and went to the sales. He fell in love with a horse and asked me to join in with I’m so I became a 20% owner of Pumpernickel Basil which he got in the sale. I can go on and on about him and us, but it will be long and dragged out, he was a chat room member of our early chat days, and Dan knew him well also. Great guy and I miss him still today.

Will passed in 2018 aged just 39.

Sanny Village started playing in 2007, that first season saw him score 34 wins and he ended his career in 2018 with 1180 and win rate that exceeded 21%. He had remarkable success in his eleven years winning 152 graded stakes races which included The Kentucky Derby, The Preakness and 4 BC races. He won 6 end of year HRP awards including horse of the year in 2015 when A One took the title.

Sanny was a life that was taken too soon but one that was lived with joy and full of great friends.

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RNP Stables

Again, I only knew RNP as a player, so I will hand over to Sim Speed Stable for a snapshot of the person they were.

Ronnie Pearson passed away last week He was one of the original players at HRP since 2004. Ronnie was a trainer back in the day running a few head and living out of his RV from track to track. After visiting Penn National he quickly made it his home, his infectious personality and stories opened up many lifelong friendships. He met his wife Lisa about 20 yrs ago and they were side by side every day since. They eventually moved back to California to care for his aging mother until her passing. They found their way back to Lisa’s hometown area in Ohio and settled there in the recent years. I can only imagine he is up there watching the Dodgers, Rams, playing golf and watching the ponies 24/7. Throw in a pizza and a stratomatic game and he is in heaven. Gonna miss ya buddy!

RNP began playing in 2004, he racked up 60 wins in that first season. His career saw 41 stakes wins including ten grade ones. Maybe a highlight for the stable was winning the champion two-year-old male category with Halfling in the end of year HRP awards. In all Ronnie had 5530 runners over 22 years and recorded 771 wins for a lifetime win percentage of 13.9%.

They were a stable that concentrated on quality not quantity and had such great horses as Lets Do It Big Boy, Halfling and Hail To The Chief, a winner of 4 grade ones. Their last runner was Creepy Shine in April of this year, a son of Creepy Time who was a flagship stallion for the stable and one that will now be lost to the game as it resides in a stable lost in the ether of past players.

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Wynnewood

Sadly I can find very little about this stable although I briefly chatted with them. They stopped playing in 2015 but the exact date of their passing is unknown.

They began at the very beginning in 2004 winning 11 races in that first season. By the time they left us they had raced 4704 times winning a very respectable 934 times for a nearly 20% career win rate. The winner of 19 graded stakes their only grade one victory came in 2012 when Blinkin Smith took the First Lady.

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Blushing Meadows

Like a few I had a long and colourful relationship with Blushing Meadows. We went from chatting, to fighting to what in the end turned into a mutual respect. We found a common ground on the battlefield that was HRP. I did a PM search in the hope to get some personal information but of the many many pages of past correspondence I found either language that is probably inappropriate or jokes that were too controversial and was left smiling at some of the verbal jabbing we gave each other. I guess in a way that sums Blushing Meadows up perfectly, one minute your best friend but the next, due to a throw away comment, a mortal enemy. Passionate is probably the best word I can use to describe BM, someone who wasn’t afraid to tell you what they thought.

They began their career in 2007 winning just 2 of their 52 starts which began a love hate relationship with the game. In 2008 they went from winning $64 from 52 starts to winning $8000 in 1898 starts and a legacy began that is still around today when you look at some of the breeding lines of your own horses. In all Blushing Meadows clocked up 130 graded stakes wins including 45 grade ones. Probably the most controversial of their grade one wins came in the 2010 Preakness when the filly Mrs Bombastic beat the seemingly unbeatable Five Fives in a race that thwarted probably the best chance any horse has ever had of winning the TC .When you consider that Five Fives beat the filly by ten lengths in the BEL in their next race it really is one of those races that baffles even the best of us. They took out 4 BC races in all with maybe Atomic Twister, the winner of the Classic, being the most recognisable. I am pretty sure that horse was named Tittie Twister when it first started racing but a rename was forced by HRP. That was typical of Blushing Meadows, always at the forefront of a bit of controversy. Their HRP career came to and end in 2020 when they ended with 2265 winners form over 13000 races clocking a 17.2% win rate.

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Meat

Meat only played for a short period of time, from 2007 to 2012. During that time they won 870 races from 7109 starts and an impressive tally of 30 graded stakes wins including eight grade ones. A highlight of their career was Stylin who won the BC Juvenile in 2008 but many will remember him for Forking Fast who won two grade ones for the stable in the same year.

Two players reached out about Meat, Aml Racing said – Meat best horse was Forking Fast, he upset a lot of people with the name and the fact he took out a G1 in it’s 3rd start as a maiden.

He didn’t care how others ran a stable or how he should, he did it his way.

He is the only person I have met from HRP.

And El Primero Rodeo –          

Meat was a legend and so was his cat. The thing was huge he had a room full of cat food. Used visit him In Gibraltar and in Spain for years. He Introduced me to the game. We used to get wasted and I would watch him breed a ton of horses and shout and kill half .

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Buckeyebred

Buckeyebred had a short career between 2006 and 2014 but in that time achieved what many cannot. In 2008 they took out the Kentucky Derby with Half Spirit a win that was undoubtedly the highlight of their time at HRP. They won 6 grade ones in their career including two with the aptly named Srf Purchase.

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Mike La Rosa

Mike may be better known for the introduction of the SRF speed figures and the SRF itself. He gave more to the game than any other player and his loss was met with sadness by the whole community because he was one of the few people in life that I would describe as a truly good person.

I am going to copy and paste the words spoken by Alabarda Stables in 2023 because nobody could say it better and the words are best left as is:

We haven’t lost the SRF founder; we lost a friend and a very good human being.

Michael Joseph LaRosa

March 10, 1957 – March 15, 2023

It’s incredible how close you can be with someone whom you never met in person, but Mike was of that kind of people, those you feel close to even at distance, those you share all kind of thoughts with, no matter if serious or funny.

One day, he read a post of mine in the HRP forum, where I improvised a race recap. “Hey, I like the way you write, and I have an idea I am working on”. That was in March 2005, 18 years ago.

The idea was the SRF; this is how it started for me.

Since then, we have been working together but also got to know each other, even if the thing we kept saying to each other “one day, be it in Louisiana or Florida, we have to meet” never happened.

He called me “paisano” because of his Italian origin and often we talked about Italy, my hometown in the North, his family’s background from Southern Italy, food, wine and of course plans for what was the early SRF.

Mike was passionate about meteorology – he liked to draw charts and maps – and of course horse racing.

He had a bright mind, he could work with numbers like nobody I have known; I remember when he tried to explain to me how his SRF numbers where created, it took me forever to understand what he was doing.

Mike was my boss but quickly became a friend to share ideas with or to talk about life, about plans, worries and hopes. He could write long emails and touch on so many different things, it was always a moment of relax to read him and then write back and discuss.

Even at distance, he’s always been someone close to me, a kind, intelligent and thoughtful friend that after a while it feels you have known for all your life.

We hadn’t talked since the beginning of March but sometimes it happened, life is demanding, time is a precious commodity, especially free time. He mentioned he might need another check-up, and that “we’ll talk”.

Yes, we will, in another dimension and I just can’t believe it actually happened.

The biggest thought and sentiment go to his family, to those who felt the pain in a much more extreme way. I can only imagine the void he left there considering how this feels as a friend.

“The Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit”.

Ciao Paisano!

I think that says it all.

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Beav Racing

The Beav was another player who seemed to be around forever but only raced for a relatively short while. Starting in 2004 he raced until 2013 scoring 550 wins from 3641 races. His only grade one success came with Air Jaws in 2007 but it wasn’t the racing career that make many people remember him. Beav had a great sense of humour and was a constant with quick remarks that always made you smile.

Jerry Garcia was kind enough to send me some PM’s that he exchanged with Beav when they were first diagnosed with MS. I think the response to the sympathy that Jerry gave him was the best example of what Beav so great.

“No worries here on the MS my man. First thing I said to the doc when he told me I had it was “I will beat it”. Next sentence was ” will this effect my sex life, will I still have led in the pencil?”. As long as that works, I am good to go!”

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At this point, these are the stables we know are missing in action—presumed to be playing HRP in whatever version of heaven exists for people who loved this game as much as we do. If anyone has more information, I’d genuinely like to build this into something meaningful. It feels important to acknowledge someone’s presence in this community after they’re gone.

As I dug through old results and past seasons, trying to track down horses and performances, I kept recognizing names I hadn’t seen in years. It made me wonder how many of those players had passed away, and how many had simply drifted from the game. And it struck me how little we truly know about each other beyond our stables, our horses, and the small slice of ourselves we show here. I hope in some way I have put that right by doing this piece.

One last thing I want to say. Doing this made me think about the sheer amount of time I’ve poured into HRP over the years—into my horses, my bloodlines, my plans—and what would happen if I died tomorrow. No one in my family knows my login details. At some point, after I stopped logging in, HRP would quietly take whatever money was left in my account and deactivate my horses. Everything I built would simply disappear. And the more I thought about it, the more unfair that felt.

So here’s my advice—advice I’ve now followed myself: write down your login details somewhere safe, along with a short message explaining how to sell your stable’s horses. That way, your family can get a few dollars, but more importantly, the bloodlines and horses you’ve spent years shaping can live on in the game long after you’re gone.

May everyone that has played this silly game Rest In Peace and I hope where you are you have a race engine that works better 😊

Categories: EDITORIAL, FEATURED STORIES, Racing Information, SRF Interviews