Have a 4yo filly who at 3yo won the Juddmonte quite nicely.

Jockey rode a good race when she was 3yo without instructions, just let the jockey get on with it - went something like - slight hold up, steady progress from 4f to 3f pole, activate turbo at 2f pole.

This time at 4yo, same jockey, identical ground conditions, horse in top condition, jockey decided - sit at the back of the bus, no actually, sit in trailer behind back of the bus, gaze ahead and admire as whole field ahead gets long head start, press turbo at approx 2f pole finish about 8 lgths behind winner (position irrelevant). Trainer spitting blood and teeth at jockey.

THEN THE GAME FROZE immediately after the winning post, one of those regular "access violation" messages, so nothing saved from the race. So CTRL-ALT-DLT and I get to reload and rerun the race.

Second time, gave jockey instructions - "slight hold up", "don't trail" (still spitting teeth and blood). Jockey does exactly as trainer ordered and wins by 4 lgths going away.

The moral of the story - don't assume that jockey knows best.

I've had a number of instances where the jockey decides to screw things up voluntarily by drastically changing tactics. But only on rare occasions do I fire the idiot.

There should not be any crashes now. If there are you need to report them in the tech support forum listing details in this thread. viewtopic.php?f=26&t=11490

If they don't get reported they don't get fixed. Be sure to update your video card drivers and if you use mods make sure you install them correctly after patching. Mods are the main course of crashing. Specifically having a modded data folder that contains copies of standard game data files (such as the translat files). Copying over newer data files after patching seems to be the usual cause of crashes.

This particular access violation happened two days ago. Next time it happens, I'll send details to the support email address.

Cheers.

I've found plenty of occasions that when left to their own devices I lose big races thanks to poor decisions from jockeys, they always hold the horse up and fly home late on to grab 2nd or 3rd. On my hold-up horses I always make sure I set the 'don't trail' instruction now.

It is time consuming but I always set instructions - if I can't work a horse out I enter it in a graded race and ride it to find out where it likes to sit in a race.