I know an SO7 league is a long time away but I was thinking why not start now and plan for the future of the league. This first discussion is about the National Hunt side of the league.
Firstly a Question.
Do we need Novice races?
In my case there was no real difference between the horses I uploaded as Novices and the the horses I uploaded as Open horses. They all had the same training and ran in the same kind of races in my main game. They were Novices in name only.
I have made a couple of assumptions when making this schedule up:
1. There was probably only about 10 trainers who actually won a Group race
2. The majority of trainers had horses in the 110 - 140 rating
3. The bottom 10 -15 trainers had horses rated less than 100.
If my assumptions are wrong, we can rivise them.
I have based the schedule below on 36 races per week. 10 group races where the top trainers can run their best horses, 18 races for the middle handicap horses and 8 races for horses at the bottom of the handicap.
In each race category I reckon we need a set of 8 races:
2 miles - one hurdles, one chase, 2m 4f one hurdles, one chase, 3 miles one hurdles, one chase, 3m 4f one chase, 4m+ one chase.
Hopefully, every horse will have a race to run in every week.
The group races:
It doesn't matter if you call races G1 or G2 or G3, the top trainers will always have runners in them. I have assumed that all races will be Open, no novice races.
Each week we will have the 8 races described above over hurdles\fences plus two extra races. These could be at distances like 2m 2f or 2m 6f. If we make each group race eligible for two runners then the top trainers could be guaranteed 20 runners.
Lastly, should there be a minimum handicap set for group races? Maybe 120.
The Middle Handicap Races
I envision these 18 races being split into two lots of 8 races. Again a hurdles\jumps race over each of the standard distances but with limits set on the handicaps
Perhaps one set of 8 races with am maximum handicap of 160 and a minimum handicap of 120 and eight races with a max handicap of 130 and no minimum handicap.
There would be two spare races for the big handicaps like the National or the Hennesay etc..
The Lower handicap races
This would consist of 8 races over hurdles\fences covering each distance and a maximum handicap of 100.
There is a small amount of overlap in handicaps so that trainers with horses in the lower\middle or middle\top handicaps will have a wider choice of races.
Again, we could have two runners in some of the handicap races.
This is only for discussion and trainers would be able to work out where their horses finished based on last seasons league would fit into this idea.
Would this type of schedule enable you to have most of your horses running each week?
Jim
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