Tips for Working Out The Yearlings

Original article written by Cheri Stewart posted 8 months 0 weeks ago

Dear yearling owners, especially new players! As we all look forward to working our yearlings in their first timed workouts, I've found a few things to be helpful. We all want the best workout time, the least chance for injury, and the excitement and anticipation can be overwhelming sometimes! Here are a few things I've found helpful.

First of all, if you're not a Simperior player... it's worth investing in it. And so are game points. You get far more feedback and data on your horses and it really is invaluable information! You'll be able to filter your horses by fitness, gallop (freak, claimer, etc.), etc. I love using this for my racing barn horses too.

Now, before I worked ANY of my horses, I made sure that I only worked the ones who were fully fit. Yes, I'd like to just see for curiosity sake how fast they are... but it's going to cost me money to have them be injured. I treat the workouts like a practice race, because that's essentially what they are. If they're not fully fit, they're doing something else that day to get them closer to that point. A jog usually is the best way to determine a horse's fitness level. The trainer will tell you if they're ready for more exercise, if they looked sleepy, if they're fully fit, training well, or need more training. Very helpful! Gallops are where the information for equipment tend to be.

Secondly, if you haven't already found out equipment from gallops, ask the trainer. Again, just worth the small investment of "real life" money. You could always go the old-school route of just working your horses multiple times to see what equipment they'll race best under, but it's far quicker and makes more sense to just use the game points and ask the trainer about equipment, if you can afford it.

Third, make SURE that you're racing your colt or filly on the correct surface! I've bought 3 now that had pitiful workouts and it's because they were on the wrong surface. It's not hard to figure out what the horse's preferred surface is. Simply look at their pedigree. The far right side of the sire and dam's main profile will say their earnings, what they ran on, how many wins, etc. Use that to determine what your horse is going to work best on. If their progeny are winning on a surface, use that information to your benefit. But don't expect a horse that's mostly turf bred to do well on dirt.

Side note: you can't determine what weather the horse may perform best in by looking at the past performances of its dam and sire, as it is totally randomized by the computer. But that's a bit of a different subject. And you can always ask the horse whisperer if you have SIMperior!

Last of all, put the information into your horse's notes. Equipment, preferred surface, preferred weather, etc. So if your Simperior account does expire, and you don't want to renew, you can simply check notes on your horses!
Happy workouts! And best of luck to all of you.

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