Feature Race | Auction | Breeding | General | Hall of Fame | Harness | Interviews | Mixed Breed | New Players | Racing | Site Updates | Steeplechasing | Steward's Cup | Triple Crown
Are You Disappointed In Your Gallops?
Original article written by Abe Froman posted 8 years 2 weeks agoAre you disappointed in the gallops in your barn? Do you not understand the new gallop structure?
I know I had little idea how to interpret my yearling crop as a whole after first galloping. Hopefully this article will help you, by breaking down the numbers recently added to the stud book. Let me start by saying that if you do not have a SIMperior subscription, you are missing out. There are many benefits available, and the stud book is just one. With that, you will have access to a breakdown of the most recent gallop from horses by that stallion. As an aside, the stats in this article will come from stallions listed in the TB section of the stud book on 5/16/15 and 5/17/15. Steeplechase stallions were not observed. All stats are based known gallops. When looking at the stallions, gallops that are before the tracking started are listed as unknown. Everything else is considered known, and the gallops/percentages are based off of these known amount of gallops.
First, a quick overview of the gallops. This has been broken down on the forum before, but for thoroughbreds, the classifications, from worst to best are Different Career, Claimer, Solid, Productive, Allowance, Stakes and lastly Freak. Some people will have different interpretations as to how good a solid or productive galloper might be, or the difference between allowance and stakes, but I am not here to debate that. Let’s take a look at what each class of gallop contains.
Different Career – No one wants to see this gallop on anything but a steeplechaser. Now I am not going to say they will never win a race, but one would find it very unlikely they would ever find the winners circle. This number comprises 5.88%, or 3359 of all known gallops in the SIM.
Claimer – The Claimer gallop is the largest group in the SIM, comprising of 18,811 horses, 32.91% of gallops.
Solid – The Solid gallopers contain 10,767 known gallops, which is 18.84% of gallops.
Productive – 12,282 Productive gallops make up 21.49% of gallopers.
Allowance – 16.27% of the known gallops, or 9299 were allowance gallops.
Stakes – This long hated group for its ‘sad wow’ status now contains 4.52% of the gallops, or 2583 gallops.
Freaks – Consider yourself lucky if you have one of the 62, or .11% of the known freaks in training or racing.
Now there are vast differences of these numbers when you look by divisions. For instance, there are no AW freaks, and only 51 stakes gallops from sires with an AW designation in the stud book. There are 4,437 AW known gallops, making stakes gallops 1.1% of AW gallops. If you have an AW stakes gallop, you have one of few elite gallops, and best of luck racing them. 10.8% of AW gallops are found in the allowance category. Productive gallops make up 20.6% of AW gallops. Even within the AW divisions, there are differences, with routers generally having more and/or higher percentages than milers and sprinters.
Dirt and turf racing isn’t aren’t as drastic from the averages as AW, but the sprint to mile to route differences hold up. Routers are by far the most developed/higher rated gallops when compared to the other two divisions. Sprinters appear to be slightly higher than milers for dirt and turf.
Before you get upset about your gallops, put them into perspective of the entire sim, especially depending on what divisions you are in. I will share a picture of the breakdowns by divisions on the forum.