First, let me explain what I have been doing.

I started my first game in SO5 and just played the game for 30 seasons. In that time I have had over 1500 goup 1 winners. When it came to breeding I just bred the most successful horses, sprinters with sprinters, milers with milers etc..

In the last 10 seasons I have bred about a dozen horses with close to max achieved potential but they never produced any top class offspring.

I decided to visit this forum for advice and read about cross breeding and introducing new blood and mutiple games, so.

I started a new game wHich I ran for 25 seasons paying closer attention to breeding, only breeding horses with a high potential. Again I won loads of group 1 races and bred about a dozen horses who achieved max potential but again never really produced the kind of offspring I expected.

I decided to start a 3rd game and import the best horses from each game. This was 7 stallions and 25 mares. The kind of times these horse ran were 5f about 56 secs and 1.4f about 2.06 secs. The mares tended to be about 1 -2 secs slower than the stallions.

I have bred these 32 horses in various combinations for 9 seasons but have yet to produce 1 horse with close to max potential. In fact, about 50% of these horses don't achieve their own max which is only about 85% of absolute max potential. The fastest sprinter so far is 58 secs and the fastest 1.4f is 2.10 secs.


Any suggestions would be welcome.

what are your aims? if it's too breed for the league then you need to be testing in CK. in game races have too many variables to be able to make any meaningful comparison about which horses are better.

search for thunderspark/scatters guide on breeding for the league for a start. both their posts have got more than enough info about the basis of a good breeding programme.

Agree with akhc, the game isn't a good way to determine the real ability of a horse, you can win multiple group one races with a mediocre horse for many reasons, only testing in the CK can tell you if a horse is really any good or not. Also it's very important to remember that a good horse in the CK doesn't automatically mean a good breeder, the two are distinct values, if a horse doesn't produce anything of worth within 3 attempts bin it from the breeding ban even if it won a thousand group one races and/or is your best horse in the CK!

I have never raced in the league but my intention was to breed somes horses to try in the league.

I will try to find the guide you mentioned.

viewtopic.php?f=16&t=5032

Written for SO4 but still very applicable IMO and do remember some horses never achieve their max potential. As a rough guide in the first 4-5 races as a two year old will not fill more than 20% of the potential bar in my experience.

Thanks for the link. I found this very helpfull. I have now bred a small but decent pool of horses. (not in league class yet).

However, it leads me onto another question.

I decided to concentrate on one distance for further improvement, 1 mile. Scatters mentions finding a miler stud who runs about 1.34. I have started about 100 new games and never found a gamebred horse who runs better than low 1.36's. Is there gamebred horses in SO5 who run 1.34?

See PJ's thread on fastest times. The times Scatters posted are for SO4. For SO5 a gamebred miler running close to 1:35:30 would be very fast. Personally I've yet to see a gamebred run faster than 1:35:30. Homebreds will go faster.

CK times are slower in so5

Just so folk know what we're talking about. Scatters CK standard times for SO4.

1. Location is UK
2. Racecourse is Royal Ascot
3. Going is Good (important to note here is that your horse might be better over GF, GS, Soft or even Heavy going so don’t be discouraged!!!)
4. Age is always 3yo+ even if trailing 4yo+ horses because they will eventually meet the 3yo’s somewhere down the line so the weight needs to reflect that.
5. Sex is open company
6. Race type is G1 (because this is what I’m always aiming for)


I always use a pace maker in my time trials so these times reflect that. I trial several times to get an average as the wind factor plays a role in times so I try to get trials with no wind effect if possible. When trailing beyond 1600m the bends come into play so horses out wide are a little disadvantaged hence also why I trial a few times to get a better average. I never use more that 10 horses to try and minimise the effect on horses that are drawn out wide.
TIMES
1000m 5f – 57.5s to 57.0s
1200m 6f – 1.10.50s to 1.10.0s
1400m 7f – 1.23.80s to 1.23.30s
1600m 1m – 1.38.80s to 1.38.40s
2000m 1m2– 2.7.50s to 2.7.0s
2400m 1m4 – 2.33.50s to 2.33.0s
2800m 1m6 – 3.5.80s to 3.4.80s

With regard to times being slower - I'm not sure that's true. Certainly at 7f and 1m4f there's quite a few who have posted that they have either achieved the middle of the range (i.e. 1:23.5 and 2:33.3) or even gone below these times i.e. 1:23.3 and 2:33.0. Given how much time was invested in SO4 for the league by some the question is whether a similar investment in time would lead to similar times at the other distances.

maybe im just slower in so5

I was trialling with age "open". When I changed to 3yo+, my 4yo and 5yo horses ran on average 0.3 secs faster.

Probably because in an open race the stallions carry 10st 5lbs and they carry 9st 9lbs in 3yo+ race.