There was an interesting comment on the last post regarding a “virtual stable”. It wasn’t so much the comment that was interesting, but the response of a member asking just what IS a virtual stable.
PERFECT! This is exactly part of what we like to do here – answer questions and try and shed some light on the business.
A “virtual” stable is a tool at Equibase (an online statistical database of horse racing statistics). It’s a way to stay abreast of horses that you’re interested in following. There are several on-line services that allow you to do this and I’ll cover three here.
EQUIBASE VIRTUAL STABLE (http://www.equibase.com/virtualstable)
This free service allows you to input horses, jockeys, trainers, tracks, Triple Crown and Breeders’ Cup series races, various stakes and even exotic wager carryover alerts. You can set the frequency of your alerts and how you want to receive them. All you need to do is register your information, select your preferences and add who/what you want to follow!
DAILY RACING FORM WATCHES (drf.com)
The DRF offers an area where you can set up watches for your favorite horses, trainers, races and carryovers. You just need to register on the site (free) and then go to the “ALERTS” section under the “Handicapping and PPs” tab. A little more cumbersome to use than Equibase, but effective.
HORSE RACES NOW (smartphone app)
For a while the App was free, then it was .99 and I believe it’s free again. Once downloaded you can input your favorite tracks, horses, trainers and jockeys and then set up how much notification you’d like to receive: workout, entry, post time, results, etc. The app also allows you to watch races live for many racetracks (including Canterbury…but not Oaklawn) which is nice if you can’t be near a TV. The downside is that there I not a “notes” section for your horses (unlike the other two) so you can add a horse to your favorites and then forget months later why you wanted to follow him! This may not apply to you younger members…but sure does to me!
Finally, you can follow the Club on Twitter (@CBY_Racing_Club). While we don’t Tweet a lot, there are instances when we aren’t at a computer to post brief information but will be tweeted out as it happens. For example, the news that we claimed K2 came on Twitter several hours before I was able to put up the post, simply because I was out all day. There isn’t a lot “deep” information there, but it is where news tends to be broken first.
Keep the questions coming and we’ll keep on answering them the best we can!
Canterbury Racing Club 
An added benefit of setting up a virtual stable is that you can follow our horses even after they have been claimed or we have sold them at the end of the year (as we are required to do). I loved Maryjean from two years ago and she is still racing as a 7 year old and has won several more times since we had her.
Easy way to keep up with horses we know well, and Equibase at least (I don’t use DRF for this purpose) will send you notifications of when all your horses are entered in races nationwide, so it is easy enough to sneak out to our favorite track and bet on a horse you might know more about than the locals of wherever they are racing at the moment. Maryjean is a great example as she wasn’t going to win at Saratoga, but at Remington and Sam Houston she still looks pretty classy (and won last time out at 9-2!).