That’s just the joy of trials. Something will have changed between the two races that suits him better. Get used to wonder trialists becoming flops and vice versa

Good Evening all

I am looking for some help with breeding and preparing horses. I know there is not a one size fits all with this but I feel I have gone down the wrong route and I am looking for some guidance with a few areas.

First of all I will say that I used the guide produced on page 2 here and found it extremely helpful. Off the back of this I decided to trial my selected 2YO through the CK at 5f,6f,7f,1m,1m2f,1m4f,2m Hurdles and 2m4f Fences whilst putting them up against my previous years best horses at the relevant distances and created a spreadsheet which works out the scores for me and leading horses. Its after this that I feel I have made big mistakes with my breeding. Generally I have had Mares come through the trials and I have chucked them straight into the breeding barn to start producing foals. I am now at around season 10 and have around 100 mares being covered by 10 different stallions, some are my own some are AI bred.

From the foals produced on average for the last couple of years I have been getting around 30-35 Foals that have around 70-80 Potential. I will also keep any foal that is higher in cruising speed which I use a bar of around 60+. I then have a selected through that make the grade due to extreme highs in certain stats. I get around 10-15 that have Potential 75 and Cruising of 50. The potential never exceeds 80 and the cruising stat has never exceeded 75.

1) Once the trialling is done at 2YO I assume I am making mistakes by putting the horses into the breeding barn? Should I be racing them in the game to develop the horses?

2) What is the ideal age to put a horse into the breeding barn?

3) If horses are placed in the barn too early will they not pass on their stats?

4) Do you trial every year to work out your best horses at different age groups?

5) When starting out I have no yardstick of what a good horse will be like in the league. What would you suggest the best thing to measure against is? Is it just chucking them in the league and find out or do they eventually become good within the game too?

I apologise for the amount of questions but I am keen to get this right

Makes no difference when you retire to breeding barn, they will pass on their stats.
If you look at older horses (eg 15yo multiple G1 winner) their potential will be very low as it reduces with age, but they may have been 100% when aged 3 or 4 and will pass that on.
When starting new game I also retire 2yo's to breeding barn for NH not so much Flat.
I trial new exports with my previous exports, I run 5 or 10 trials at each distance and keep anything that wins or gets placed.
When the number of horses at a particular distance gets to about 20 I then run about 20 races and take note of the first, second and third.
I then get rid of the hoses that performed badly, but sometimes a horse that looked good previously now performs badly, I'll keep it and give it a second chance, but not a third.
You don't always know how they will perform in the league.
I had a great 4yo juvenile hurdler who would win 8 out of 10 trials and to fill up my stable I also put in my second best Juvenile hurdler.
My best trial horse never won a race, my second best won 3 races including 2 G1's so go figure.

I'm relatively new to the CK and this upcoming season will be my first in the league but happy to share my experiences thus far....time will tell whether or not it's a good approach!
Answers to your questions;

1) I do both....I put them in the breeding barn after they have their trials, and then at the start of the new season on April 12th I return them to the stable to race them with the goal of trying to get their dark green ability bar to match the lighter green potential bar. That way my theory is they will be a better horse as a 3yo in my trials than they would if they were unraced.

2) Any age. Although my experience in my offline save of the game is that the younger they are the more likely they are to pass on their stats to their foals. From what I have seen so far in my League save I would say the same holds true. For example from 2yo to 6yo, 4 out of the 5 foals might return decent stats with one being a dud. Whereas from 15yo to 19yo, it tends to be the opposite. One foal might be decent, but the other duds.

3) I've pretty much answered this above, but I will expand it! I've found that whatever stats a horse had at birth is the maximum that it can pass on to its foal. For example, a pairing of a sire that was 85 potential at birth with a dam that was 80 at birth will only yield as a maximum a 85 potential foal (most common will be somewhere between 80 and 85). It doesn't matter that if as a 5yo the sire is 100 potential and the dam 95, the maximum the foal will ever be at birth is 85.
I have found only one exception to this rule and that was from my offline save (I am yet to see it in the League save). That exception is on easy level if you breed a 2yo sire with a 2yo old dam that both have the same potential, say 85, every now and again you will get a foal that is 86.

4) Yes I do trial every year. As 2yo's, only up to a mile. As 3yo's I do four trials - 1m at Newmarket, 1m4f at Epsom, 1m6f at Doncaster and 2m at Flemington (guess what races I'm targeting!!) I haven't yet trialed over the jumps but my plan will be to trial either 4yo or 5yo when I get around to it.

5) I have no yardstick either. My first season will be a huge learning curve but hopefully I can gauge from it how far I still have to go and what areas I need to work on. I plan to take at least two horses at each distance into the League, that way if my best trialist doesn't turn out to be my best League horse I have cover at each distance. I have found in the trials that the running style of other horses in the race can determine how well my horse might run. I could have a horse that wins every trial but then if I swap out a midfield runner with a front runner that horse then gets beat by horses it was beating comfortably before.

I hope that has given you some ideas, and not totally confused you!

Cheers.
Paul