Claiming Races - A How To

Claiming races are pretty much exactly what they sound like - horses are entered for a price tag and are claimed by other trainers and owners that want them. It's a crazy simple concept that makes up the majority of Thoroughbred racing here in the US and all around the world - there are up to 20,000 horses born per year in the United States, and not all of them are good enough for the stakes. That's why you have races such as straight claiming races and allowance/optional claiming races. Here's the difference between the two.

Claiming Races

In a straight claiming race, all horses are entered for a price tag. This means no matter how well or how terribly they run, they are all up for sale and pretty much anyone can put in a ticket on a horse. After the race is finished, they are claimed by their new connection and trotted off to their new home. Many horses make their living in these type of races and can transfer owners a dozen times, especially if they are racing on the lowest level. Price tags can range from about $3500 - $100,000. The 1999 Kentucky Derby winner, Charismatic, once ran for $62,500 only to win the most prestigious 3yo race in the country and just miss in the Triple Crown months later.

Allowance/Optional Claiming

Here is the bread and butter of the racing secretary! Allowance/optional claimers were created to help fill racing cards and are exactly like they sound - it is an allowance race, typically of the non winners of 2 or 3 type, but the horses can also be entered for an optional claiming tag if their connections wish. Not all horses have to be entered for a tag; most of the time they're not, especially if they're under the allowance conditions. A horse may be over the allowance conditions, but he must ran for a price tag - so say the race is a Non Winners of 3, 50K optional claimer - if that horse has won 4 times, he may enter but he will be entered for $50,000 and up for grabs if he catches anyone's fancy. Many horses that have come off of long layoffs, such as the highly regarded Honor Code, have entered in this contests as a way to getting back into form without running for a price tag.


How Allowance/Optional Claiming Races Will Work On SS

I will still be running allowances here and there, but there will also be the optional claiming caveat added as well. This means if you have a horse you're not too sure of and are thinking of getting rid of, you can enter him or her for the price tag of YOUR CHOICE and see if you get any interest. You get the added bonus of getting some extra points for your horse, as well as some extra SS in your account if the horse does end up getting claimed.

When you enter a horse, you need to specify in HUGE RED LETTERS if the horse is for sale and how much the price is. So you would have to, in your entry form, put the name of your horse ABOVE ITS STATS in bright red, along with the price tag. Bold and a larger font wouldn't be a bad idea either, if you really want to make clear which horse is for sale. If you're entering more than one horse and only one is for sale, make sure you clearly separate the horses, whether it be by a page break or some extra spaces between entries. Or heck, if you wanna make two posts where one horse is clearly for sale and the other is not, that's fine with me too! Anything to make it abundantly obvious which horse is for sale and which is not. I will still keep my "Three horses per owner" rule if you'd like to enter more than one horse in an optional claimer.

I'm not going to suggest crazy extravagant prices for your horses - no one, not even The Bank, has 50,000 SS! I am leaving it up to the owners to decide how much they want to put their horse up for, despite the fact that in real life this isn't so. I'm doing this, as Wildfire suggested, as I would rather not limit the horses in the race if you feel your horse is worth more than the claiming price that I personally set. Any horse that has been raced with some decent stats and a good record will always be worth more than a horse that's been unraced. And throw in a good pedigree? Oh my, heart be still! I would suggest, also, to specify if the horse you're putting up for a claim is a 1st, 2nd, 3rd, etc gen, and write up a quick pedigree. I know some people on here prefer full pedigrees (2nd gens x 2nd gens, 3rd x 3rd, etc) so I would rather not have an angry member PM or you saying that they were deceived. Not that I think anyone would but I have been a mod for too long, and I have seen these things happen on other forums.

To claim a horse, you would PM the race holder (more than likely me!) to put in a claim for a horse you want that's running for a tag. Please make SURE the horse you want is running for a price, and that you have the SS for it. After the race is run, I will PM the owner of the horse and let them know that someone put in a claim for it; after that, you'd deal directly with the horse's owner to transfer the SS and the horse. If more than one person puts a claim on a horse, I will draw the winner at random.

Thanks for reading, and I hope to see you at the races!