My race track

Your racecourse: its name, and up to two tracks that you draw yourself, section by section.

None of this is compulsory. If you draw no track, your races are run on the game's default track, which measures 3,900 metres and therefore allows every distance up to that. One can be a racecourse manager without ever opening this screen.

The name of the racecourse

It is displayed at the top, with a Change link: see Racetrack's name. It is the name under which your races present themselves, and it appears on every race line the owners and the punters consult.

Better still: that name is clickable for everybody, and it opens the drawing of the track the race is run on. It is the shop window of the trade — a manager who has drawn a fine circuit shows it off at every race, without saying a word.

Two tracks

The Track number selector moves from one to the other, and each announces its length in brackets. At the moment of creating a race, you choose which to use.

Two tracks means two formulas: for instance a small ring for sprints and a big circuit for distances. On the race lists, the second is signalled by a (2) after the name of the racecourse.

Track in chooses the surface: sand, turf or ground. Let us be frank, this is decoration: the material changes the look of the track in the 3D race, it has no effect at all on the times.

Drawing, in practice

The principle is simple: a track is a closed loop made of 100-metre sections, and you are only allowed to add sections that join up with the previous one.

1. The first section: two choices only, and they are not equivalent. They fix the direction of the race — rail on the left or rail on the right — for the whole track, and that choice cannot be taken back afterwards.
2. The following ones: on the right of the screen, the game offers only the sections compatible with the join in hand — never more than two. Click, and the track grows by 100 metres.
3. Close the loop. The status line under the drawing tells you where you stand: choose the first section, then add until it closes, then the track is looped and can be saved. As long as the loop is not closed, saving is refused.

The maximum length is recalled above the toolbar. It caps at 7,100 metres, that is seventy-two sections.

The toolbar

• Delete the last section: the reverse gear, to be used without hesitation — one draws a track by trial and error.
• The four arrows move the whole track across the ground. Useful when the loop heads towards an edge and no longer has room to close.
• The two rotations, clockwise and anticlockwise, turn the whole thing.
• Close-up view and global view change the scale of the drawing, without altering anything.
• Save, active only when the loop is closed.

Three refusals may be displayed along the way, and they all mean the same thing: there is no room. The section overlaps the track or goes off the ground, the move is impossible, the rotation would put the track out of bounds. Go back one section, or move the track, and carry on.

The shape, on the other hand, is not decorative

As much as the surface has no effect, the layout has one, and it is worth knowing about.

In a bend, a horse placed far from the rail covers more ground than one hugging the rail, and therefore advances more slowly. In a straight, everybody is equal.

Two consequences for whoever draws:

• A very twisting circuit, made mostly of bends, heavily favours the first numbers — those starting on the rail. The last numbers are penalised there.
• A circuit with long straights largely neutralises the advantage of the start, and leaves more room for the horse's qualities and for the riding.

So it is a real sporting setting, which combines with the Starting positions chosen in the race: see Create a race. A manager who wants open races draws straights.

What happens to your races when you redraw

Two rules to remember, because they go in opposite directions.

The races already created do not move. Each race keeps a copy of the layout it received at birth. You can redo your tracks without touching what has been announced.

The races to come, on the other hand, take the track as it will be. And if, at the moment a calendar creates its race, the track it designates is absent, deactivated or shorter than the distance asked for, the race will switch to the default track with its distance brought back to what that one allows. Shortening a track can therefore silently shorten scheduled races. See My calendar.

To go further

The same drawing, read-only, opens from any race through the name of its racecourse: see a race's track. And for the trade as a whole, the racecourse manager's trade.