It doesn't work like that. Occasionally, you'll see a Listed race that has a horse that has never raced before. A "Maiden" Race is simply a race that is open to horses that have yet to win a race. This is the type of race a new racehorse will start out in, or indeed a horse that has raced 50 odd times without a win. Occasionally though, when the trainer/owners think they have a great horse they might forego the usual process of starting at the bottom and working their way up the ladder, and instead enter their unraced horse in a race against better competition than what you would find in a Maiden race. The risk in doing that comes with having to pay higher nomination and acceptance fees to enter a better quality race, but the potential reward is higher prizemoney.


Not abnormal. The race is not categorized by the horses that decide to race, but rather the race type is announced and restricts the type of horses that can qualify for it. eg. A horse that has won 5 races can not nominate for a Class 3 race (3 wins or less to qualify), yet is may nominate for a Class 6 race (6 wins or less to qualify).

It's up the trainer/owners to decide when and where they think their horse has a chance of winning. If their horse has only raced a couple of times, and say it has won both races, then it would be ineligible to race in maidens and Class 1 races (Class 1 means no entrants are allowed to have had more than 1 win). If they felt their horse was good enough, and were willing to pay the extra fees, they might opt to race the horse in a Class 5 race if they wanted too, in the hope of earning more prizemoney, but with the expectation that they would be racing against some horses that have been good enough to win 5 races.

I've got the formguide in front of me for the Caulfield races on the 9th April. In race 5, there's a horse called Taxi Joe. It had had just the 2 races prior. It's 1st race was a $15,000 1,419m maiden race at Sale, where it finished 9th in a field of 12. It managed to win it's 2nd race, which was a $13,000 1,980m maiden race at Tatura. It looks like the trainer/owners thought Taxi Joe showed too much promise to continue chasing the smaller prizemoney at the country tracks, and decided to pay the higher nomination and acceptance fees and give it a run against much better quality competition in a Listed Metro $100,000 race. It didn't quite work out as planned as Taxi Joe finished 24 lengths from the winner. It was a calculated risk they took. It didn't work, but at least they know that the horse probably isn't going to be a blacktype (winner of Group race(s)), and it's probably best to focus on chasing the smaller prizemoney on offer at country/provincial races.


A maiden race means none of the horses has won a race before (excluding a couple of unlikely technicalities). Your best bet is to avoid all Maiden races, as it's often just pot luck which horse will win. The same goes for 2yo races also, because the horses are really just learning to race, getting used to the barriers, and racing in front of people yelling and screaming at them, and the trainers are still trying to identify the horses' ideal distance, conditions, gear, running position, etc. It's a bit like AFL footy, where you wouldn't expect many 17/18yo rookies to come out and rip the game wide open. You give them a few years to master their trade, before loading higher expectations upon them. Similarly, 1 good game at VFL/WAFL level isn't usually good enough to be elevated to the best 22 at AFL level, and 1 good $13,000 country Maiden win shouldn't be enough to think your horse is good enough to win a $100,000 Listed Metro race.

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