Notification Services

Keeping track of horses, trainers and more

Level: Beginner

By Dana Byerly, Hello Race Fans Co-founder

So you’ve noticed a few horses that you’d like to keep track of, maybe some potential Kentucky Derby or Oaks contenders, or a horse that you think might perform well in his or her next race. You might be asking yourself if there’s an easier way to keep track of such horses than searching for workout listings and entries on a daily basis. While those searches can be fun (and perhaps a bit obsessive), there is an alternative: the horse alert/watch/virtual stable! Since each company that offers these excellent services calls them something different, for our purposes we’ll just refer to them as notification services.

These notification services allow you to create lists of horses, trainers, jockeys, etc., and get notified when an event, such as an entry into a race, occurs. Basic notifications such as horse and trainer are free and include entries, results and workouts (horses only). Each service also allows you to make notes about each entry.

Where do you get such a thing? There are several options, all with slightly different offerings and notification preferences. Here’s an overview of each service followed by feature comparison matrix.

Brisnet.com – Stable Alert
Brisnet has a few unique offerings: Sire alerts (35¢ per name per day), Dam alerts (10¢ per name per day), the option for text emails and the ability to rate any of the alerts you create on a scale of 1-3. You can also view activity for your “stable” by date or by seeing a list of workouts for your alerts at Brisnet.com. Another nice feature is the search, which includes suggestions for those to tough-to-remember or oddly spelled names.

Go to: Stable Alert

Daily Racing Form – Watch
The Daily Racing Form has the most flexibility for notification preferences. You can have all watches sent to you or specify that only specific watches are sent to you by clicking into the individual watch. There you can also specify which information you’d see or have emailed (workouts, entries, results). For example, if you have a watch for Animal Kingdom, you could decide to not have anything emailed to you and to check in at your leisure; you can have only workouts emailed; or you can have everything emailed. You can customize at will. You can also have nothing emailed to you and view the information at the DRF site.

Go to: Member Center > Watch Messages

Equibase – Virtual Stable
The Virtual Stable is well integrated into the Equibase site, so it’s quite easy to add horses to your Virtual Stable. You can search directly for a horse or add them from anywhere that they’re listed. Individual notifications can be sent as they occur or as a daily digest. Equibase offers the most notifications including tracks, stakes races and racing series, such as the Triple Crown and Breeders’ Cup. The Triple Crown stable lets you to get a single daily digest of works, entries and results for every Triple Crown nominee. Of course, you could manually add all 398 horses to your list if you wanted!

Go To: Virtual Stable

Feature Comparison Matrix

Usage
There are plenty of ways you could use a notification service. As mentioned, following horses that catch your eye on the Kentucky Derby or Kentucky Oaks trail is useful. Likewise in the spring and summer when the first 2-year-olds start to emerge. Another nice use is when you liked a horse that you think will perform better next out or under different circumstances (longer or shorter distance, different surface, better trip, etc).

Our suggestion? Try them all out and see which ones suit your needs. You’ll need to create a free account to set-up your alert/stable/watch. You might end up actively using more than one or all of them. Happy horse stalking!