Hi
How do you increase a horse's actual potential?

I have several 2 year olds with 90%+ possible potential but their actual potential is only about 50%. In the past I have just sold them, but is there someway to increase the actual potential, say race them more or do you just have to wait for it to increase natually.

Could I be racing them over the wrong distance? I have 2 yo miler with almost max potential but only 50% actual potential. I have tried racing it over 5f, 6f and 7f but it finished almost last each time.


This brings me to another related question. When you breed horses is it the potential a horse reaches in the game that counts or is it the horses possible potential?

From what I have observed potential rises when you race at 2yrs old for the first 4/5 races only. Doesn't matter at what distance. Seems to be a "run in race" thing. After that it will next increase at 4. I don't know how many races for I don't run many horses past 3 years. Some horses never achieve their max potential.

As for breeding (and again this is my observation after breeding a ton of horses) it's the maximum potential that's used. However if a horse has a lower realized potential the offspring are unlikely to reach maximum potential either.

Thanks for the advice.

I have been trying to gauge how my horses do and found the following:
about 5% of horses achieve max potential at 2yo, about 50% at about 4yo, the rest never achieve full potental.

I am finding this frustrating as the horses with the best potential never seem to achieve it. It makes me wonder if my breeding stategy is correct. I will scan the forum and perhaps post a seperate question.

Surely it just means to are training/racing them wrong ad you would say that a horse has potential to win several group 1s, but then if it only wins 1 it has not fulfilled its potential. So if a horse wins a group 2 and it has achieved max potential that means it is unlikely to win anything better than that.

I am using the simple training schedule, horse is always ready to race.

It is the difference between absolute potential and achieved potential that concerns me. I have horses that have achieved 75% of their absolute potential, win 2 G1 races as a 2yo, 5 G1 races as a 3yo but never reach their absolute potential. Th light green bar never seems to go up.

Some horses never reach their absolute potential. That's part of the game.