Entering Races - Hit the Books for Training

Original article written by Autumn Blackmill posted 3 months 3 weeks ago

This is the fourth in my series on entering your horses for the best chance of winning or earning a consistent check.

There is no one right way to train your horses, though there are innumerable wrong ways. Though the latter is not what we’re worried about today. I think that most questions about training can be answered by opening up the old race pages of the past and diving deep into how the winners found themselves getting their picture taken.

*Horse Titles Are Pretty Cool
What better way to find out the best way to train a horse than to look at the best of the best? You can find these award winners in “Manage” -> SIMuseum -> Simmy Awards. From here you can narrow the winners down by year or category. Take a look through them at your leisure and just notice how the trainer campaigned their horse, how often they used 2 or 3 weeks between races, etc. You can also look at how they trained, if they did, during this time by clicking on the horses’ history tab. This is most useful for when you are taking a longer than 3 week break between races. If you look through enough of the best horses, you’re gonna find a couple who also needed to take a long break, and you’re gonna find a bunch that win off of that break too. Take note of what kind of training went into getting such a win.

*Winners of Stakes Yore
If you should happen to be sending your horse into a stakes race, notably one that is NOT player made, you should know that you can look at all the previous winners of these game made races. Go to “Manage” -> “Stakes Schedule” and from here you can view any and all stakes that are run each and every year. Narrow your search down to the basic eligibility (for example, Thoroughbred, 2 year old, male, dirt, mile/mid) so that your computer isn’t having to load all of the races for each year you search. Now you can select a year, and type in the name of the stakes race in the quick filter. Boom. Race found. Now you can look at that year’s winner and see how they trained up to the race, or else what races they used as preps and what they did after the win.

*What Are the Up and Comers Doing?
The 2 year old season can be very exciting for most every player. Those horses you have been biting your nails about in nervous hope are finally hitting the track to show what they can do. It doesn’t hurt to look at the 2yo standings for your division, sorted by Speed Figures, to get an idea of how to train up a 2yo to their first (hopefully victorious) race. Go to “Manage” -> “Horses” and from here sort them by your needs. Make sure you are selecting the correct breed, or else you will be looking at a mixture of Thoroughbreds and Mixers. Take a look at the horses who made the list, and how they won their races. What training went into getting the horse onto the track? Did they use gallops, timed workouts, barrier trials? It never hurts to emulate a successful trainer.

*Alerts Aren’t Just for Sales Horses
Use your alerts quite liberally. You have the ability to make a note of why you are watching that horse in particular, so use it. There have been times where I’ve had several horses in my notes with a simple “Look at Training” tag on them, so that when they do race I can see what training they had and how they did in their race. This is incredibly useful for keeping track of a horse with a training pattern I’ve deemed interesting. No putting the horse in my player notes and then searching them up when I remember to. I can just click on my alerts and see how all of the active horses I’m interested in have done lately.

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