I’m familiar with “the road to the KY Derby”, but how do the horses who run in those preps get into them? I’ve done a lot of googling and have yet to get an answer.
For example, today we have the Louisiana Derby - how did they decide which horses are running in that race?
Basically you just pay the nomination fee by the date. If it’s a popular race that may overfill, they generally give preference to the “better” horses.
You can read the LA Derby info here:
https://www.equibase.com/premium/eqbHorsemenAreaDownloadAction.cfm?sn=SN-FG-20230325-578155
If I’m reading this right: $400 if you nominate by Jan 1. $1000 if you nominate by March 11. Another $10k to actually enter to race. If you miss Jan 1 or March 11, you can pay $20k to enter at time of entries. Preference give to stakes horses and by earnings if the race exceeds 14 entries.
Edited a bunch of times thanks to my inability to read plus autocorrect butchering my English.
Adding, because some people may not know:
Most of the time when you enter a maiden, claiming, or allowance race, there is no entry fee. Sometimes there is a very nominal fee going to different organizations, like aftercare.
But for stakes races, you pay an entry fee that’s usually a few thousand dollars.
Normally how it works is there is a small, non-refundable nomination fee of a few hundred dollars that gets you on the list of potential entries. Nominations usually close a few weeks before the race is to be run.
It’s common for connections to nominate horses to races they know they probably won’t run in, because if you miss the nomination deadline, you either can’t run in the race or it gets VERY expensive to enter. And… horses. They often laugh at our best laid plans. So it’s cheaper to nominate to any race you might consider in the future so you have multiple options.
Generally 5-7 days before the race, depending on the track, is when you submit your actual entry and your entry fee.
Thank you, this is very useful! How did you get to that page on Equibase?
You go to the stakes books for each track:
https://www.equibase.com/static/horsemen/horsemenareaSB.html?SAP=TN
The page changes as races are run and new meetings start, and pretty soon the link above will be taken down.
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