Prepare a race
Preparing a race means deciding in advance how it will be run. Nothing is steered during the event: everything your horse does, it will do according to what you save here.
The table, and how it gets filled in
The race is cut into sections of 100 metres. Each row of the table covers a portion of the course, from From to To, and gives it a pace and a line.
On opening, a single row covers the whole race. Change its To and a second row is born at once for what follows; start again as many times as needed. You can go up to fifteen portions, which is far more than necessary: three or four are enough for most races.
The From column is not entered — it follows from the previous row.
The pace
It says how you push your horse, in five notches:
- Unprompted: it goes at its own pace, without drawing on its reserves;
- A little prompted, Prompted, Very prompted: the three intermediate notches;
- Whipped: it gives everything it has.
The rule that decides everything: a horse at the end of its stamina that is still being asked for effort does not slow down a little — its performance collapses. The whole art consists in pushing it as close as possible to its limit without crossing it.
That stamina is not a figure on display: it follows from the resistance of its genetics and, on Chorus, from its resistance biorhythm — so from its form of the moment.
The line
It says where it runs in relation to the rail — the inner edge of the track.
Internal, Middle and External place it more or less close to the rail; you can also designate a precise lane, lane 1 being the rail one.
Running on the rail gains ground in the bends, since you turn shorter there. In exchange, you more easily end up boxed in behind a horse you cannot pass. It is the trade's permanent trade-off, and it has no single answer.
The riding points
At the top of the window, two figures: Available and Spent. That is your budget of effort, and the scale is simple — per 100-metre section:
- Unprompted: 0
- A little prompted: 2.5
- Prompted: 5
- Very prompted: 7.5
- Whipped: 10
The total is recalculated at each change, and nothing stops you going over the announced budget. It is a landmark, not a barrier.
And that landmark is calculated on the horse's resistance alone, without taking its biorhythm into account. That is deliberate, and it is where your judgement comes in: a horse in form takes more than the announced figure, a horse in a trough distinctly less. The Horse tab gives you that biorhythm — it is what tells you by how much to adjust.
The three tabs
They serve only to inform you — nothing is entered in them.
Track shows the shape of the course: where the bends are, where the straight is. That is where the division is decided. Hover over a row of the table and the corresponding portion lights up on the layout; you can move the track with your finger or the mouse, and zoom to look at a passage more closely.
Horse gives its genetics and its biorhythm. Those are the two things a tactic is founded on: what it is capable of, and its form of the moment.
Race recalls what it is running in — the distance, the turf, the opponents.
Starting from a template
The Use a tactic list applies a saved preparation in one go. These are not preparations “for a given race” but templates, made to serve again in any event.
You build up a few of them, classified above all by distance and by the number of points they consume: a thrifty template for a horse short of stamina, a spendthrift one for a horse with plenty in hand. The table is readjusted to the race's real length, and all that is left is to retouch it according to the layout and the form of the day — which goes far faster than starting from a blank page.
These templates are created and modified in Jockey — My tactics.
Two warnings the window can display
“You are not this horse's jockey.” Preparing the race makes you its jockey, for that race only. It is the normal case when an owner prepares the horse himself.
“The owner has already prepared this horse.” Saving will replace his preparation. It is up to you to see whether that is what you want.
If nobody prepares
A tactic drawn at random is applied at the start, so that the horse is not too badly handicapped. But the jockey is then no longer considered as such for that race.
An owner who sees that his jockey has prepared nothing can replace him, for the length of one race.
You can come back and modify your preparation as many times as you like as long as the race has not started. Once the start has been given, the window will tell you so and will keep nothing more.
Going further
Test a horse lets you try a preparation and see the result straight away, without waiting for a real race. It is the best way of learning, and the only way of checking an idea before committing to it.
Jockey — My races takes all of this from a higher level: the trade, stamina and the biorhythm, and how to build a tactic rather than guess it.