No No No No No No NOOOOOOOOOOOOO. Why bred a stayer just for the National, I don't get it. if u don't want a high rating then don't go for the best races, im more than happy running in them and find out who the best stayer is, I finished second and whatever weight I get im happy with. The game is about finding out who's the best horse at any one distance . And not trying to get as low a weight as possible for the national.

Agree John.

And yes Martin been there too my national horse last season was second to you twice I think and went to around 150 without actually getting a win and saw very little action after that, top 3 Paul Moore’s and too heavy for the National, though I remained pleased he stayed competitive regardless of weight. So much so same nag is likely coming back due to the silly 7yo rule now.

Anyho back on tack for this thread.

Fairly standard final day on the flat with bugger all to shout about. And a single win on the NH, with a stack of bad rides for me etc etc. Jim’s got the magic touch this week it seems.

really good finish to the week with 1 winner yesterday and 3 today the best of which was infamous fred scoring by 4 1/2l though on a down note my 2yo sprinters are truly awful and will be culled in week 5

congrats all runners

After a horrible first two days finally i managed some good performances for day three.

3 wins on the flat with the highlight being Favourite Son grabbing the win in the Kentucky Derby .

I blame my poor race choices for the early bad results because i didnt just not do well in many races this weekend, but in many cases finished at the rear of the field.
So i will be looking more closely at my race selection for week 4 as i continue to learn another aspect of league racing.

Thanks to all the League Team and runners.

Oh and i think the Race Day intro's for the flats are a fantastic addition to this season!

Gray - maybe make some notes about what can be done for these four mile+ chasers for next season.

Should we debate about introducing stand alone qualifying races for the GN only? I understand it doesn't mimic real life - but in terms of making things easy for yourself with handicapping and fairer for trainers.
We do have the space to add extra races so why can't we have one race a week that is over 4+ miles that all GN hopefuls enter. For the purposes of debate let's say all GN runners need to start in three of these races - this gives you a good form line to rate the horses for the GN only, Gray. Doing it this way allows any of the horses to compete in any of the established chase races and they are not penalised for the GN. TOM will have the normal ratings and you can keep a record of the GN ratings which you can publish in the forums from when the first lot of horses have had their three runs.
I guess the big thing would be that for the GN all the ratings would have to be manually entered - I have no idea if this can be done and I do understand it would be a lot of extra work for yourself.
If we were to go down this track we would also need to work out how these extra races would need to be set up - how they are to be rated - would we need two races per week....2 maidens the first week or two then a maiden and open race for the following weeks?
It would be good if we could get a nice even spread of weights for the GN and not a handful of top weights and then the rest of the field on bottom weight.

Another blank today on the flat. Very few of my horses even placed. It just shows how competetive the flat is this season. I thought my flat horses were going to be ultra competetive this season.

Another good day over fences with 3 winners today and several other nice runs.

This has been an amazing week over fences with 10 winners this week. Definately think the softer ground helped and the fact that in the first two weeks my horses underperformed and had good handicap ratings for this week.

I am not sure why we are again discussing doing something special for the grand national, best horse gets highest rating carries top weight, if it is good enough to win fine, if not also fine. We do not need special qualifiers or side ratings for one race, especially since for the most part the best horses avoid the lottery and go for Cheltenham. You happen to have a great 4m then for that race it should be weighted accordingly. Just as it is for the other big handicaps on the card, or should we have special ratings for say the coral cup too?

I don't think we need special races I knew when I sent Great Mac to the Grade 3 last week if he won he would be 160 I have two National horses and I think most trainers do I hope to keep the one away from Grade Races and stick to Handicaps and the Moore's to get races in them again it comes down to Trainer Management and that is the league either you want to manage the horse for the national and by pass all the Grade races or you manage for the grade 1 at Cheltenham.


Gray

Slightly irrelevant post here by me but thought a few might find it of interest. In real racing the handicap marks of the horses entered in the Grand National are frozen at the stage when the weights and final entries are published, usually around mid February. This means that none of the performances at Cheltenham effect the mark, thus enabling a healthy ante-post betting market. In years gone by the handicapper kept a separate handicap for the Grand National. Also right into the late 70s early 80s it was commonplace for almost half the field to carry overweight, thus making a mockery of the handicap anyway. If you watch some of the old extended footage available on youtube you will see this. Even horses most of us older people may remember as National stalwarts regularly carried huge amounts of overweight. Spartan Missile went off 8/1 fav in 81 despite carrying overweight and having a 54 year old amateur jockey in John Thorne. Another regular amateur was The Duke of Albuquerque who rode his horse Nereo several times and almost always put up over a stone of overweight !

https://www.grandnational.org.uk/2018/0 ... icap-2018/

I'm glad my front running chasers are doing well, the limited time i've had to breed them I spent on turning most of my chasers to be front running, I love real life front runners. I held out using Greenbank park until I could find a good horse and i'm glad I got it right, he has a lot to live up to after being my best ever jumper in SO5. I only noticed last night he's by my female horse My Princess Jane, she has ran some weird races so far by running very wide in her 2 races.

Youtube 'Vo Rogue' classic Aussie front runner.

Well i was closer to reality than i could have realised lol

That was great , if I ever get a front runner on the flat i'll name him What happened to the trainer , died of some horse disease !!!