Not a bad third day, no winners but a few placed in both codes. The handicaps are kicking in now and that helps.
One of my better horses, "Mr Mr" (great name for a mare!), provided proof of the racekit quirk. She is an out and out hold up horse who wants 3m+. I ran her over hurdles and fences in the first 2 weeks over 3 miles and the racekit pulled her up both times whilst in contention, she was not alone. This week I ran her over 2m7f, which is too short, and she stayed on from the rear to finish second. It was noticeable that in the 2 2m7f races there was not a single horse pulled up. I guarantee if these races were run over 3m there would have been plenty!
Polite rant over .
Congratulations to all winners, seeing lots of new ones which is great, and the live stream is great fun.

League does seem to reward front runners presently. With so many similar horses now it feels to me it is less about what's the best and more about who breaks first in what particular race. Even debating all exports to read don't trail and challenge earlier.......

has always been an issue. True front runners stand no chance but if there is 1 handy horse and the rest are even pace/hold up then 99% of the time the handy horse will win.

Export a horse with force the pace and see what happens they die in a ditch
its always been this way they have to be natural front runners
so if no horse takes it up they naturally dont mind doing it the hard way every
season Handy horses that get an easy lead have been very very hard to beat
thats why i tried to get it into my breeding

My 2m hurdlers are all natural front runners and I've been having a mess around to see if I can put it into my flat horses tonight, im not sure if I can but if I bred anything half decent in the next week i'll put it in the league and see what happens.

All my horses are natural "even" pace horses, but I have noticed that when one of them is forced to set the pace they seem to be very difficult to beat. It's almost like they run at an even pace but at the front of the field and they still have a natural sprint in the last 2 furlongs. I would like to know how to get more of my horses to run like this, especially in the shorter distance races.

I have won 4 races this season where my "even pace" horse has run against a field of what I think are "hold-up" horses and my horse ran at an "even pace" in the front from start to finish.

I tried trialling some of my horses with "race handy" or "go early", but the even paced horses nearly always caught them in the last furlong. Maybe because they were not natural front runners.

Last season I exported all my horses with an "even pace, go early" command and it did net me 35 winners, but from memory, I suspect I had at least another 35 who were leading with a furlong to go and just run out of steam and were passed by horses who had not gone early.

This season I exported all my horses with only "even pace" instructions and not many have run out of steam in the last furlong.

Well this is how far I've got tonight. Will try to improve him over the next few days.

I paired my 2m league front running Hurdler Punjabi with my league Horse Nibbs Point. The only problem is I might get a soft ground horse.

Not difficult to see why you three (Paul, John and Jim) are so far in front of the rest. The thought and effort you put in is incredible. I have never even considered specifically breeding a horse that runs in a certain style.

Its the attention to detail that separates the wheat from the chaff ........ colour me impressed !

Or them getting even further ahead of the chaff is ultimately bad for the league. I tried breeding today, but the tedium is not something I can endure any more.

I get what you mean but if no one had bothered inventing electricity because we already had fire where would we be. It is natural to want to push boundaries and improve.

SO7 will be the great leveller, at least for a week or two !!

Josh this is just for fun, this is the first time in 5 months I've bred a 3yo and I'm only getting one horse to see a front runner can compete. There is very little improvement to come from the best horses, the best horses this season can only improve a little and so what u see this season is just about what u will get next season. My best Sprinter now Bella Bettini could improve a little bit but it would take a hell of a lot of work to do it and it's not worth
it.

I see the dilemma here. But I think it mirrors the real world. There are always some trainers that dominate and get the best horses. It will be so in the league as well. I dont think it is necessesarily bad.

For the lessser trainers a win will then taste much better. And sometimes we will get lucky and find that superhorse that can challenge them.

It is not good if the CK favours a certain running style, but that is something Mark must consider for his sim. That different races demands different attributes and styles.

From my observations doing calls the past seasons - any horse that is left in front has a real chance if it's stats are good enough.
This is what I have noticed. Any horse that just rolls out the gates without urging and finds itself in the lead while the rest of the field take hold will go very close to winning.
If in the first half furlong or so - one or two other horses go with the leader and then take hold - it is still an open race.
Plenty of horses are coming from the back of the field to win - especially in the hunt - James Shea and Leon are the proof in that.

Over the jumps I have a 50-50 split with front runners to hold up horses and I've won 9 with front runners and 8 withhold up horses so u can win with any running style.

I think it's much harder to lead all the way in the Hunt compared to the Flat - a bad jump followed by a slow jump and your 5 length advantage is gone and your horse is in 3rd spot