Some of the questions we are most frequently asked concern entries. People want to know how many days in advance do you enter and when do you know if the race is going”. They see races every day at different tracks and naturally assume you can just run anytime you want to in a race somewhere (“I see races all over the place every day, just run the horse in one of them!”). If only it were that easy!  90%+ of the races you see every day at most tracks are either maiden (non-winners) and/or cheap claiming races (90%+ of all horses are maidens or cheap claiming horses, so that makes sense). Finding a race to run in is frequently very challenging! Here’s how the process works, as briefly and basically as possible…

1. The racing office at each track puts out a “condition book” about 2 or 3 weeks in advance that offers a series of possible races for each day. They try to offer races for all categories of horses, for example dirt, turf, long, short, maidens, winners, claiming horses at different levels, allowance horses, and stakes horses at some point during the month. You can see condition books from various tracks on Equibase; http://www.equibase.com/static/horsemen/horsemenareaCB.html
2. Typically 2-5 days in advance (you can see exactly when in the condition book) people enter horses in the race they have selected. Out of 15-20 possible races the racing office will use 9 – 10 races in different categories as above that get enough horses (people don’t bet on and the office won’t use a race with 2 or 3 horses in it!). If the race you entered in is not used you have to hope they ‘bring it back’ (try it again another day) or look elsewhere.
3. When your horse is within a week or two of being ready to run, you thus will look at condition books at the track where the horse is stabled (or close enough to be able to ship the horse) and try to find a suitable race. For example, if you have a maiden two year old filly talented enough not to go in a claiming race, you need to find a maiden allowance race for two year old fillies. Best case, there might be one or two races like that at a track in the course of several weeks. You enter and hope they get enough horses and decide to use the race.

The dates shown on Kenwood's website for our runners under the 'entries' section are suitable races for each horse listed in the condition book(s) at various local tracks. In other words, it’s the races we are pointing for http://www.kenwoodracing.com/statistics/entries . On entry day (#2 above) we enter and see if the race is used. Then, AND ONLY then, will we know the actual race date, race #, time of race, rider, etc. And even then the horse could get hurt or sick or the race cancelled due to weather or other issues so while very likely it will run, literally until the starting gate opens we do not know for sure. Sorry but it’s not a football game, there’s no schedule in the world printed months or even weeks in advance that will tell you if the race will go and if your horse will run in it. 

Those are the basics in a nutshell, but there’s all kind of stuff like ‘extra’ races at the last minute, ‘dirt only’ entries in turf races, and the tiny number of stakes for the best horses in the country, which are scheduled months in advance and you can point to with more confidence they will go. We have a free seminar each year at our office called “reading the condition book” that walks people through the details. This takes literally years to really master, but the three points above offer the basics as to how the process works.

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