New Rule and Frustration

[Ripley]

I'd like to broach a new idea that Sunfrost, Cavallo and I agree should be a new rule on all three sites. To keep bias out of the races so that everyone has a fair shot, we have decided to make it a rule that people who are leasing horses out to other members are not allowed to judge races with those horses. I cannot judge races that Cav has entered Uno Momento or Fire It Up in and she can't judge races that Proteus Prince and Flying Fashion are in. This is a great general rule, especially now that leasing is taking the place of selling. It's already complicated enough when we breed horses that we want to succeed, but this will make judging more defined.


My Tiny Frustration: I'm having a very difficult time finding races for my three year olds. Either I run into the monsters that are taking advantage of undercard races even though they should be in HOTY preps or I run into older horses that had bad seasons last year. I've have had to take a scratch over an automatic second place finish on several occasions this year. I can only name one time that I saw a three year old beat an older horse this season and that was when I judged and placed Sammy's Avengeable first. I really think we need to discuss this age bias or make up new races for only G4 three year olds with limited HOTY experience (which would benefit more members than just me).

It's not fair that I have to run Swing Dancer against Fusillade and Ares (not picking on Cavvy and Frosty, this was the only race available that week with runners) and automatically end up third because she doesn't have 3 more wins on her record. It's also not fair that I've had to scratch Flying Fashion out of every race because of an older horse's presence and can't grade him up so Cav can't have him in time for the Turf Sprinter Crown. I can't get them wins so they'll do well against the best three year olds and then I miss my goal and then I have horses that are considered "less" than horses they was running against and winning on a daily basis at two.


I want to fix this age gap or create races. I have three year olds that ran in unbelievable horse of the year races at 2 and finished in the top three every time that year now losing to older horses that have less experience (in general and hoty) than my newly turned three year old. It's extremely frustrating and it's curbing the preps for the Crowns/Tiaras of all distances/surfaces to only allow the best three year olds that were also the best two year olds to have a shot at those career defining wins. We need more variation, but it all starts at the unrestricted grade four/five undercard races.


I need ideas. I can't be the only one frustrated with this. Several other people are pitting their three year olds against older horses this coming week so I know I won't be the only one affected.

[creativecause]

In total agreement with you rips. Most of my three year olds are lagging behind and I don't want to put them in 3yo races against the big dogs because they'll place last, which isn't helping their cause at all. So putting them in undercards against older horses is my only option and that doesn't help them much either. We need 3yo restricted grade races so those that are still G4 or G5 can catch up to those who are already G3 or G2.

[Ripley]

Thank you. I think what we could do is chop out some of those fluff G5 races at GHF and input G4 restricted 3yo only races. I made some G4 restricted 3yo races for distance and sprints in March Wk 1 at GHF. Alot of those lesser races at GHF don't get a lot of entries when they're open age. We'll see how it goes and then maybe we'll add restricted 3yo races to March Wk 3 and 4.

Since we're already almost done with February, I'll edit races at GHF for January and February and then we'll have those options for Y17. By getting rid of the early G5 races at GHF, we'd give G5 horses less entry options and they'd be able to get into races with more than 1 runners at BSD and TW.

Does this sound okay to everyone? We really don't need to play around TW and BSD since their schedules are pretty solid at the moment.


Do we want to make those G4 3yo restricted races only for three year olds that aren't top HOTY horses?

[Sammy]

I agree with this completely

[Kenren]

I feel like the G5+G4 races at bsd worked perfectly well last year, we just need more of them. I don't know how well we'd fill 3yo G4-only races, but I'm up to trying whatever. You guys can edit the bsd schedule as you need obviously, as I've been having the same problems.

I think changing anything about the age gap for the first part of the year would be silly since everyone (including yourself/the rest of us admins) were very adamant about it last year and really started implementing it. Like in the real world, it makes much more sense to just add a ton more 3yo races in general, as the ones at bsd are pretty much the only undercard 3yo races on any of the tracks.

Also I think it would be unfair to restrict races to only non-HOTY competitors, because that takes away a lot of freedom when there aren't HOTY races available. Plus there are grey areas there. We don't do that with any other races, so I honestly think that just adding MORE races will solve most of the problem. Besides, if they're three and still G4, regardless of whether or not they're in HOTY races they may need a boost. For example, Santana's Legend may need a bit of help since she hasn't been scoring that well this year. So anyway, yeah, just regular grade restrictions should be fine.

[Kenren]

Also the leasing thing shouldn't even have to be a rule because I thought it was self-explanatory and an unspoken rule... But if people aren't following that then yes. Rule.

[S u N f r O s T ~]

^ What Kenny said about the rule being followed is exactly what I was thinking xD

Also, I would be happy to simply run race weeks at SOPS if we need more 3yo-only races. I'm pretty sure we did that last year and I'd be happy to add races again. I'm always hesitant to touch schedules XD I believe that adding more race weeks will definitely solve the problem. I agree with Kenny on saying that we should just add more races and leave it at that because there are gray areas regarding whether a horse is pure HOTY quality or not at this point in time.

[Cavallo]

This all sounds fair to me.

[Cruisey]

This sounds good to me, but my problem is my 3yo's are all G3+ so its hard finding races for them that won't be run against older horses at the G3+ stage (like Hellfire or Like A Lady for example). But yes this is fair!

[Kenren]

I went through BSD's schedule and added G5, G5+G4, and G4+ 3yo races every week for the next couple of months, so make sure to check those out!