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 Southern Hemisphere races 
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Group 1 winner

Joined: Tue May 15, 2007 3:50 pm
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Post Southern Hemisphere races
How have people addressed the southern hemisphere races on the game? As these horses should turn a year older in August, but on the game turn a year older in January the same as the northern hemisphere horses. This throws a lot of the races out as the ages and timings no longer line up.


Sat Apr 11, 2020 2:46 pm
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Post Re: Southern Hemisphere races
I haven't reached that part of making my schedule yet.

I guess the first option is to have the Australian horses six months ahead of where they should be. So, the new 2yo in January will aim for the Golden Slipper in March. Then the races for 3yo between August and December will actually be for late season 2yo. This way you can still make the Melbourne Cup for 3yo+.

Alternatively, have the Australian horse six months behind, starting out their 2yo seasons at the end of the year, then make the Golden Slipper a 3yo race. But this means you'd also need to make the 3yo Australian season stretch into the horses' 4yo seasons, and would probably have to make the Melbourne Cup a 4yo+ race.

My preference is probably the first option, to be honest.


Sat Apr 11, 2020 3:25 pm
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Post Re: Southern Hemisphere races
Yes, I think you are right Panther. I'm working on a worldwide schedule, and the southern hemisphere races are posing a problem because of this.


Sat Apr 11, 2020 3:35 pm
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Post Re: Southern Hemisphere races
Same here, but the Australian section of my schedule will be fairly limited and won't have too much interaction with the rest of the schedule. It's mainly in there so that European horses can target the Melbourne Cup, and also to feed some Australian sprinters into Royal Ascot. However, I want to have all the big Australian races in there, with enough background G2 and G3 races included to give all of the horses some form figures and regular races throughout the season.


Sat Apr 11, 2020 3:50 pm
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Post Re: Southern Hemisphere races
Sounds good! I'm trying to build on my UK/IRE/FR schedule to include all other countries


Sat Apr 11, 2020 4:48 pm
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Post Re: Southern Hemisphere races
Yeah, I'm reworking mine, now that I have a lot of free time with the lockdown! I'm updating my UK schedule, still planning to include pretty thorough schedules for Ireland and France, but planning to spend a bit more time working out the optimum number of races to include for the US, Japan and Australia to keep the overall schedule stable. Will also include the more limited schedules from the other countries too.


Sat Apr 11, 2020 4:59 pm
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Post Re: Southern Hemisphere races
The other big issue is that we can only have 3 meetings per day, its just not enough for a worldwide schedule. The sheer amount of races the UK has means there is almost always at least 2 must have meetings on the weekends, and considering most other countries have their big races on the weekend too makes it impossible to fit everything in. You can start adding them on weekdays, but this is unrealistic and my schedule has a lot of meetings on weekdays too to give enough opportunities to all horses.


Sat Apr 11, 2020 8:18 pm
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Group 1 winner

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Post Re: Southern Hemisphere races
Yeah, this is one of the reasons why the overseas races in my schedule will be slightly more limited than I'd originally planned. Saturdays are the main issue, as you say. The UK races are the priority, so I don't really want to drop any of the important UK races. I still hope to be pretty thorough with Ireland and France, as those schedules are the most closely linked to the UK, and thankfully many of their races are on Sundays. Hong Kong and Dubai have very limited feature race schedules, and only at certain times of the year, so that should also be ok, especially with Dubai running mostly on Thursdays. The main issues are going to be the US, Japan and Australia. I need to concentrate on the main races and festivals in those countries, then plan fairly basic year-long schedules around those events, to ensure that all local horses have races and form running throughout the year leading into the big international events.


Sun Apr 12, 2020 1:05 pm
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Group 1 winner

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Post Re: Southern Hemisphere races
Yes, well I'm making progress on mine, what with the lockdown keeping me indoors. So will be happy to share when its done. Out of interest have you given my UK/IRE/FR schedule a try?


Sun Apr 12, 2020 7:11 pm
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Post Re: Southern Hemisphere races
qwsa wrote:
Yes, well I'm making progress on mine, what with the lockdown keeping me indoors. So will be happy to share when its done. Out of interest have you given my UK/IRE/FR schedule a try?


Yeah, the lockdown is giving me an opportunity to spend a lot of time on it, so I'm hoping to have it ready by the time real racing returns!

I haven't downloaded any schedules. I always make my own schedules for the Starters Orders games. I've been doing it for around 15 years now, ever since Dodgy Dave made his decryption spreadsheet available to enable us to edit the old encrypted files that the game used to come with! Thankfully the process is much easier now, although I still start everything from scratch and basically rewrite the data files.


Sun Apr 12, 2020 10:14 pm
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