RP Springboard Mile (KYD) – $400.000 Purse
RP- For Two Year Olds
One Mile on the Dirt
December 15, 2019

The month of December began, and trainers were wondering: Where is the RP Springboard Mile? The ungraded stake was created in 2015 and saw Mb Stables have early success in it. The field sizes were not as big then, but the race has clearly taken off since then. In 2017, there would be KYD points at stake, and the race was won by the late Newsnight. Last year, we had a dead heat between two horses that were both looking like amazing TC contenders at the time, Beach Dandy and Fear The Dragon. Those two would go their separate directions afterwards with Beach Dandy of course winning the KYD, and Fear The Dragon remaining a good horse, but he would never be a factor in the TC races.

Despite this fast-moving history, the RP Springboard Mile was not a part of the stakes calendar when the December races were released, though it would not be until December 5th that a trainer called out the game for its exclusion of the race. That trainer would be Aer Stables, who made an innocent, though very direct inquiry wondering where the race was. The game would quietly post the race, leading to this very writer pointing it out in the thread that the race had been added to the schedule. However, despite simply being an innocent response saying it was now on the schedule, my post was deleted for same reason, and about 10 hours after my post, the game stated, “It was posted and should be available. Thank you.”

Well, you’re welcome, HRP. An apology would have been nice in that post as well, but we all know that we should not be expecting more for them. It’s a wonderful game. The amount of effort that goes on behind the scenes within HRP must be enormous, and sometimes the amount of server space that is required for all of the coding to take place for every single virtual horse we create is likely much greater then we all imagine. Don’t get me wrong, we all know that every single one of us gets charged for that, but still, a lot of time and effort does get put forth on their end. Plus, it’s the holiday season, and they are human. A race from a track that we don’t really run at otherwise was excluded, likely on accident. It happens, and we can thank Aer Stables for setting the ball in motion to get this race on the calendar and relatively full in just ten days.

The flip side of HRP’s forgetting a major stake like this comes at the expense of coverage in the SRF. As writers, we get our schedule of races to cover well in advance and it’s not as if we all punch a time clock and work in the same real-life office where we’ll all easily be on top of things and say, “Who’s going to cover the Springboard Mile at the last moment?” There is a lot that goes into the schedule, too, and with the Springboard Mile not being on the stakes calendar when our schedule was made, then it was in danger of not being covered. I didn’t want to see such an important race go uncovered, but without the time to sit down and look at all the horses in the race, I figured I would add a little commentary about the lead up to this race. I will recap it normally.

Prediction: 9-3-1-10

— NS

Categories: STAKES ARTICLES, Ungraded