How are horses selected for races?

[KingAnon]

How are horses selected for races?

You take last night's SD Handicap. For a $150k pot, only 6 horses were entered, and 2 of the people involved had 2 horses in the race. How does that even work? Same with other G3-G1 races. People like Bob Baffert or Steven Asmussen get multiple picks, while other people who would no doubt love a piece of that pie, seemingly get shut out.

For normal races too, how do they select the horses? Do they really select rules like a maiden, $10k level way ahead of time or do they just see who is available or something else?

[Bigadam119]

The track posts a menu of races (condition book) and the trainers enter horses into each race. The races that get the most entrants are carded for the races that day. Stakes races are different as the owner must pay a nomination fee, then an entrance fee to enter the horse into the race. Again the trainer is typically the person who is making the decision on which stakes race to nominate/enter into. Stakes are carded for the races that day regardless of the number of entrants. The reason the San Diego has 6 runners is because that was all that was entered

[JustRalph]

Anybody who wanted a “piece of the pie” could have entered as long as their horse met The criteria or conditions and could pay up.

There is a shortage of horses everywhere. Even more of a shortage of stakes level horses

[green80]

anytime you see a race going with less than a full field, it's because that is all that were entered in the race. The only time a horse "can't get in" is because the race overfills. If you look at any condition book, you will see "sub" races to replace the ones that don't fill and look at any overnight and you will see Xtra races for when the subs don't fill. There are far more races written that there are horses to fill them.



Look at any overnight and you will see the number of horses entered in the race at the bottom of the race.

[green80]

Originally Posted by JustRalph

Anybody who wanted a “piece of the pie” could have entered as long as their horse met The criteria or conditions and could pay up.

There is a shortage of horses everywhere. Even more of a shortage of stakes level horses

Right, any licensed owner that had a 3yo or older thorobred and willing to pay the $1900 to enter and run could have run in the race.