Choose a trainer or a jockey

This window appoints the trainer or the jockey of one or more of your horses. Depending on the role aimed at, it is headed Choose a trainer or Choose a jockey.

You get here from three places: the Modify link next to the trainer or the jockey on a horse's card; the same link on the horse's line in My contracts; and the actions menu of that page or of My horses, which lets you act on several horses at once.

Only the owner can open it: it is the owner who recruits.

Check the list first

At the top, the window recalls each horse concerned with the name of whoever currently holds the role. Take note of it before confirming: if you arrived through an actions menu, your modification will apply to that whole list, not to the single horse you had in mind.

The three choices

The webmaster (automatic mode): the game holds the role. Applied immediately.
Myself: you take the role. Applied immediately too, without asking anybody.
Another player: a Username field appears. You enter their name, and that creates an offer — nothing changes until they have accepted it.

The Modify button confirms.

Mind the default choice. The window opens on The webmaster, except in one case: a single horse aimed at and you already hold the role, in which case Myself is preselected. In other words, confirming without thinking entrusts your horses to automatic mode. Read what that is worth in My contracts before doing it unintentionally.

The username has to be exact

It is looked for exactly as you write it. If it does not exist, the window answers This username was not found, check! and changes nothing at all — not even for the other horses in the list. Copy it from a message or from their card if you have any doubt about a capital or an accent.

What confirming carries with it

An offer already pending is replaced. Each horse has only one offer per role: confirming a new one cancels the previous, and choosing Myself or The webmaster cancels it too, settling the role there and then. That is in fact the only way of withdrawing an offer, there is no button for it.

A horse that is no longer yours is ignored. Ownership is read again at the moment of confirming: if one of the horses in the list has been sold in the meantime, it is quietly set aside. You cannot place a trainer in somebody else's stable.

Finally, a change of holder makes the previous one's work be lost: the last test for a jockey, the training programme for a trainer. That is deliberate, and it is explained in My contracts — to be read before reassigning a whole stable.

And then?