Plans for the Season

This is an exciting time of the year for many people in the horse racing industry.  After months of work and hundreds of jogging/ training miles, this year’s crop of 2 year old horses are getting close to “go time”.  Like a rookie who has showed their stuff in minicamp and training camp, the time is near to get out on the field (or track) and see what you can do when the lights are on.

We here at Carey-Swenson stable are in a unique situation where we have a two year old who is getting close (Don’t Tell Wayne) and a tough veteran coming off injury who has a timetable that is nearly identical (Mo).  Both of our horses are on track to hit the track for qualifiers in early July.  For us, it can’t come fast enough.

Since we are getting close to the start of the season we can start thinking about what our schedule might look like.  I written about scheduling in the past, but each year is different.  This year, we also have another horse to consider.

For Mo, it is pretty easy.  We will start him in Chicago and based on his success, we can go from there.  Where we start in Chicago is determined by what he is eligible for.  Almost all horse races are written based on certain conditions.  Here is an example of a race where Mo might start his season this year.

“Non-winners of $5,500 in their last 5 starts OR Non-winners of 5 races or $25,000 lifetime OR Non-winners of a race with a purse of more than $5,800 or more since October 12, 2012.  The purse for this race is $7,500.”

At first glance, it looks rather confusing. However, if you just take it line by line, it isn’t really confusing at all.  Walking through the conditions, we can see whether or not Mo would be eligible:

-          “Non-winners of $5,500 in their last 5 starts.”  This won’t work.  Mo made $30,500 in his last 5 starts dating back to last summer.

-          “Non-winners of 5 races or $25,000 lifetime” This won’t work either.  Mo has 19 career wins and $270,000 in earnings.

-          “Non-winners of a race with a purse of more than $5,800 or more since October 12, 2012” – Bingo.  Given his time off, he fits this condition.

 So that is where he will start.  That race is offered at both Maywood Park and Balmoral Park.  So what happens when he wins?  Then he will have to move up in class.  Take a look at the next level on the Chicago circuit.

Non-winners of $9,500 in their last 5 starts OR Non-winners of 6 races or $35,000 lifetime OR Non-winners of a race with a purse of more than $9,200 or more since October 12, 2012. - $10,000 purse

As you can see, each of the conditions was made a little more open.  This allows better horses to enter and ideally keeps the playing field level.  It also offers a higher purse, which makes sense.  Since you are facing more challenging competition you should be racing for a larger purse. 

 I know what you are all thinking.  Mo will win both of those pretty quick, so what comes next?  To that I say, hold your horses for a second.  We have to think back to two years ago when Mo was coming back from his first major injury.  It actually took him 3 tries to win at the first level and two tries to win at the second level.  If he is his old self, he will eventually win his way up to the next level and the condition looks like this.

Invitational (may be handicapped) - $17,000 purse

Pretty simple.  If you are too good for all the rest of the conditions, you get put in the invitational.  If you are winning a lot in the Invitational, you may be assigned an outside post position (that’s what ‘may be handicapped means’).  At this point you are going against the best of the best for that racing jurisdiction and it also offers the best purse.

Last year I talked quite a bit about this, but never really explained what it all meant.  Hopefully this was a good little lesion in how you enter a horse in a race.

You also might be wondering what other options we might have with Mo.  Well, in Chicago there aren’t any.  Our only other option would be to take him to another track that offers more conditions.  We don’t need to worry too much about that now.  One step at a time.    

Now we move on to our two year old.

It has been awhile since we’ve had a young horse and they are much more fun to schedule.  Generally speaking, they will all start out in the same type of race that is open to horses that have never won a race before.  They are sometimes referred to as a ‘Maiden’ race. 

The huge wild card with young horses are stake races.  Mo raced in a number of stakes races as a three year old with some pretty good success.  Here is a quick listing to jog your memory:

-          Pennsylvania sire series first leg – Purse of $42,000 – finished 2^nd

-          Pennsylvania sire series leg two – Purse of $42,000 – finished 5^th

-          Review Stake at Springfield – Purse of $34,000 – finished 1^st

-          Hayes Stake at DuQuoin – Purse of $46,000 – finished 2^nd

-          Keystone Classic – Purse of $50,000 – finished 7^th

-          American National – Purse of $265,000 – finished 7^th

-          Windy City Pace – Purse of $225,000 – finished 1^st

(full stories of each race can be found in the blog archives)

You probably noticed that the purse money that we were racing for was much higher than what you get in general conditioned races.  So how do you get into those races?  In short, you have to pay to stay eligible.  Part of the reason the purses are bigger is that payments made months before (in February, March, April and May) are used to boost the purses.  You also have to pay a starting fee.  General conditioned races like the ones Mo races in do not have starting fees.    

Instead of walking through the stakes process, I’ll send you over to a very good YouTube video put together by Tom Janes of VIP Stable.  VIP Stable puts together horse partnerships out east and also uses John Butenschoen as one of their trainers.  I’ve talked to Tom many times at the horse sales in Lexington and he does a great job walking through the process.  Our situation isn’t exactly the same since Don’t Tell Wayne is a New Jersey bred and the example in the video is a New York bred, however, you’ll get the general idea.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3xImKFnifjo

We decided to make Don’t Tell Wayne eligible to a few stakes races in the Midwest, but kept his schedule pretty light.  As you can see in the video, there is a lot of risk vs. reward decisions to make when staking.

That’s a lot of information.  While many of the entries in this blog are fun stories about our times with In Over My Head, I also like to add some ‘what is it like to own a racehorse in general’ posts.  Hopefully some of you got something out of it.

Now back to Mo.

Today is May 23^rd.  It is very conceivable to think that just two months from now, Mo will be back on the track.  I’m not kidding when I tell you that I’ve been hearing “his” songs a lot more lately.  Optimism is running high at team In Over My Head.  I’ll admit I am prone to reading more into something than is actually there, but it is strange that after all these months of downtime I’m seeing little signs here and there that make me think we may be in for another fun ride with Mo. 

With that we are officially making an important shift.  No more ‘stay patient and stay positive’.  It’s time to bring back his familiar battle cry.  Talk to you all soon and say it with me:

LET’S GO MO!!!