As I was looking over my entry options for the first week of the season, it occurred to me that I really have very few racers. Of course I knew this, but it didn't strike home until I saw that short little dropdown list on the entry screen.
It seemed like fourteen racers would be sufficient to keep me occupied, but now I'm starting to wonder.
With such a trim stable I'll be able to give more thought to each horses schedule and development. That's good.
However, it will mean very few races every week. That's bad.
Case in point. Week One is upon us and I, like everyone else, is chomping at the bit to get started racing. After analyzing the horses, my roster yields just three or four potential starters. All of the others would have less than 30 days rest. My options sure are limited.
Domino, Sabretooth, and Tombstone are all right at the 30-day mark, and I would consider starting any of them now. However, I'd prefer that they had another week of rest, and since most of this week's fields are fairly heavy, they'll probably all sit until next week.
That leaves Sazerac. The 3yo filly will make her debut this week and will be my only racer. After a long off-season, starting off 2013 with just a single entry is a bit disappointing. But this is going to be the norm this season and I'm ready for it.
With my ten veteran horses scheduled to run approximately every 40 days and four 2yo's that'll average less than 6 starts each, I'll be lucky to top 100 total entries for the whole season.
You know what? I'm OK with that.
In the past, I was slowly expanding my racing string and I found that managing them all was becoming a chore. I had too many horses to enter so I didn't spend any real time choosing the best race. I just entered them in the first appropriate race and moved on. I came to the conclusion that less was more.
I'll try to keep my racing string in the 10-15 horse range and fill the other 30-40 stalls with stallions, broodmares, and foals.
Since I'll have 10-12 foals born every year, it'll mean that I'll have to churn through horses relatively fast. They'll have to show me something early or they will be gone.
We'll see how that goes...
2 comments:
I am in a similar situation Jimbo, I have 14 stalls but somehow only ended up with like 5 racers. I do not want to be a breeding farm I have 1 stud and 1 mare but I also have acquired several yearlings, with such a small racing crew and running all of them the last two weeks of the season last year, none of my horses will see the track for at least a month (that sucks) because the maintenance fees wait for no one.
Sunset Ranch
You should have no trouble picking up a couple more racers if you want to Jamie. Good luck this year!
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