Ten pairings, reverse-engineered from the game's own decoded math, built to beat every variable Derby Owners Club throws at you — each leg type, each distance, both surfaces. Not the highest stat line. The right horse for every race on the card.
A race is a fixed sequence of phases. As a horse crosses each one, that phase's external stat becomes the dominant input to its speed. This is byte-verified — it's why the "perfect" horse depends entirely on which phases its style commits to.
Running style isn't power — the external total is flat (~220) across every style. It only decides which phases your horse spends energy in. So a closer with high Start is wasting points. Match the aptitudes to the style and the horse punches above its stat line.
Each slot is the single best pairing on the whole roster for one job — its leg type, its distance band, its surface. Gold bars mark the phases that style actually wants; that's the match to look for.
Where nearly all the prestige lives. Turf lines also max higher — a true 45/45/45 is reachable on grass. Your flagship belongs here.
A required niche, not the main event. Dirt lines cap around ~121 internals — strong, but they can't reach the turf ceiling, and you can't win the dirt majors without one.
No horse in the game is 45 in all three internals, so raw averaging always drags one stat down — it walls out at ~45/43/45. The only thing that tops off the last points is the pair-match (pedigree) bonus: when sire and dam share high/low aptitudes, the foal gets up to +3 ST / +2 SP / +3 SH.
City Commandant is the key — its extreme alternating aptitudes [15,1,15,1,15,1] are a pedigree magnet. Commit to it as the stud and the line converges to that pattern, the bonus climbs to the full c=6, and it caps a perfect horse.
| Gen | ST / SP / SH | Match |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 37 / 40 / 40 | c=0 |
| 2 | 38 / 42 / 40 | c=0 |
| 3 | 39 / 43 / 40 | c=3 |
| 4 | 42 / 45 / 43 | c=6 |
| 5 | 44 / 45 / 44 | c=6 |
| 6 | 45 / 45 / 45 | LOCK |
The foal engine, the six-phase model, the pedigree bonus, and every stat in the roster are decoded from the ROM and corroborated against real cards.
The exact dirt-aptitude curve (how much a point is worth on dirt) and the per-race going table aren't fully cracked yet — so "255 vs 208 dirt" is a confident direction, not a measured delta.
Muddy-turf-runs-like-dirt is real from play but lives in an undecoded schedule table. Treat dirt aptitude on turf horses as weather insurance.
DOC