Welcome to Horse Racing Park’s Guide to prepare your new colt or filly for its first race. This guide is meant to be a quick outline of how to understand the process and develop a process that you can use for each of your horses as they travel through your stable along the path to racing glory. I am going to write this guide as though you are new to this incredible simulation. I am also going to assume you have read the rules thoroughly and read La Canada’s Basic Guide intensely. I assume that because it is a prerequisite to using this guide. If you are going to enjoy this simulation, you are going to need to understand it, and those documents will get you there.

Those documents cover the broad scope of the sim. This guide is covering just the aspect of getting that new horse and getting it to the races. Now, in his guide, La Canada talks about a variety of ways of obtaining new horses. This guide is concerned with only “virgin” horses. That term applies to a horse that has never worked before. It’s the new toy fresh out of the box, and we are going to talk about what to do with it, how to do it right and how to set guidelines for future references as you bring more stock into your stable. If you handle each foal the same way, you will always have a guideline to rate your horses as they enter your stable. You will better know what to expect of new stock as they come in to join your stable.

So, you have a new virgin horse, however you acquired it. Perhaps it came as a gift from HRP for joining, perhaps you went to the sales ring, perhaps you were very ambitious about breeding and leased or bought a stallion and broodmare and bred a new foal. In any event: there it is, ready to go. I am going to now talk about how I train my new horses. There are probably as many approaches as there are trainers, but there are standards that have developed over the years.

Most important, five furlongs dirt is the accepted default distance for comparison for most things two-year-old. When trainers discuss their young horses, they almost always refer to that distance for comparisons. When February gets here, and juveniles can work that far, it’ll be all about five furlongs dirt for the rest of the year. For the purpose of this guide, I will be writing after February 1^st. Besides the when, there is the where. There are two basic places to keep your horses: the farm and the racetrack. I keep my racehorses at the racetracks, and I keep my horses in training at the farms. That means that my new foals are immediately placed at a farm in train mode. That way the meters are being advanced automatically through the training process, and I don’t have to be bothered by anything other than training when the horse comes green/green.

As an insight to my methods, and this is strictly just the way I choose to run my farms, I have all of my new foals congregated at two farms, one in CA and the other in NJ because of the proximity of those farms to many racetracks. I will explain later why that is important to me but need not be significant for this guideline.

THE FIRST WORK:

This is it! You’ve opened the box, checked out the conformation, perhaps it’s not so hot and you’re hoping for a great work to compensate or it’s beautiful and you want the work to compliment it… well, hell you just want the work to be fast. You’re at the farm, on the dirt, fast, set to five furlongs… always, and the trainer is set to “b”, breeze.

You click the button that says WORK, and you have your first indicator of what your horse will be. If the horse is destined to find its way to a race career on the pay side, the work time will need to be lower than 1:05, but that’s no guarantee, there are other benchmarks that need to be hit along the way, and there’s always the chance that it’s a morning glory. If you see a number sub1:04, then there is cause for celebration for you are most likely looking at a future stakes horse.

More likely, you will see numbers in the 1:05’s. The closer to 1:05, the more likely a useful free level career, and if you are here to enjoy a fun hobby of simulated racehorse ownership, then these are just fine to play with while you wait for your Triple Crown hopeful to come along. Then there is 1:06 and above. It’s a strange area up here. The big stables won’t bother with these. I have seen some develop into decent racehorses, especially if they are router conformation. Anything 1:07 or above is not going to be very useful. Again, it doesn’t cost anything to park them and revisit them now and then to see if they develop. Also, there is the salvage value of fillies to consider. You can always save a well-conformed, well-pedigreed filly until she is 3 1/2-years-old and breed her. By the way, there are the rare sub1:03 virgin runners. Stick around 10 or 20 years, and you might see one.

THE SECOND WORK: OPTIONAL

Here’s where I vary from most stables because I’m impatient. I want to get an early insight into my two-year-olds, so after that virgin work, I give them a trip to the racetrack for a work with a jockey up. It’s kind of stupid, but I started doing it originally and have continued to this day. And that brings up the point: whatever you are doing now, you should continue to do with all your stock in the future, You are establishing you stable baseline and will be able to compare every horse the comes through your stable with every other horse. And now you see why I want farms with proximity to racetracks, so I can always have a farm to track ship for that second work conveniently. So, now I’m at the racetrack, on the dirt, fast, set to five furlongs and the best jockey I can find is set to “H” handy.

I click the button that says WORK, and I have my first indicator of what my horse is going to do with a jockey up prepping for a race. This early work would have to be at least 1:00⁴H or faster for me to get my hopes up, more likely I want to see a sub1:00 work if I’m looking for a pay side runner. Generally speaking, by the time these guys reach their first start, and they have had a number of preps, I see free side works ranging from around :59³H to 1:01H and pay side works from :58⁴H to 1:00H.

If you have chosen to go this way in your training, it is at this point you can make some choices depending on how excited you are about racing. You’re new; you’re eager to race. If you haven’t quenched that thirst with other avenues, like purchases of older horses, it is possible to take your new two-year-old to the races right now, and that ends this guide, but I wouldn’t recommend that. I keep them at the farm and start testing adds, so that by the time they reach the racetrack, they are fully prepared for their race career.

THE SECOND FARM WORK:

Whether you choose to go to the racetrack for a work or not and you do decide to test your adds before racing, here is the procedure for the next works that will take you up to race day: This second farm work is going to be clean, that is without any adds. You’ve read about adds and understand the gist of them. Basically, they are four chances to improve your horse’s baseline ability. For the sake of the fantasy, they have been given names that relate to horse racing, but they could just as easily be called add #1, #2, #3 and #4. This work is your baseline work. This is the work that you will use to set as standard for all the other works. It will be faster than the first work. Your horse is back at the farm, and you are waiting for it to return to green/green. Once it has returned to green/green, you can work it again: You’re at the farm, on the dirt, fast, set to five furlongs… always, and the trainer is set to “b”, breeze.

REMAINING FARM WORKS:

From here on the works are routine: wait for the horse to come back to green/green, place an add on and run the standard five-furlong work. If the horse improves its time, keep the add in place. If the horse works slower, remove the add. Repeat the process for each of the adds until you have seen them all. When this is done, you are ready to go to the races. It is at this point that I repeat one last work:

THE RACETRACK WORK:

Whether or not you’ve been to the racetrack with your horse, take your horse to the racetrack and give it its “Welcome to the Races” work. You are at the racetrack, on the dirt, fast, set to five furlongs with the best jockey you can find and set to “H” handy. You click the button that says WORK, and you have your first indicator of what your horse is going to do with a jockey up prepping for a race.

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