You've been there. You spent three hours resetting for the perfect inheritance, hit every rainbow training camp, and your Power is through the roof. Then the race happens. Your horse girl is leading the pack at the 200m mark, looking like a goddess, until she suddenly slows to a crawl. Her head drops. Her stamina bar—which you thought was enough—is bone dry. She finishes eighth. It’s infuriating. Honestly, it’s the most common way to ruin a run in Uma Musume Pretty Derby, and usually, it's because the community-sourced uma musume stamina thresholds aren't just suggestions; they are hard math that the game's engine will punish you for ignoring.
Stamina is the most misunderstood stat in the game. Most players treat it like a "more is better" bucket, but it’s actually a gatekeeper. If you don't hit the gate, you lose. If you go way over, you’ve wasted precious training turns that could have gone into Speed or Power. Finding that "Goldilocks zone" is the difference between a Grade A failure and a Champion’s Meeting winner.
The Brutal Math of Distance and Surface
Let’s get one thing straight: Stamina requirements aren't static. A 1200m sprint in Bakushin territory requires almost zero thought regarding stamina. You could probably win a short track race with 300 Stamina and a dream. But the moment you step into the 2400m+ range—the Arima Kinen, the Tenno Sho (Spring)—the game stops being a footrace and starts being a survival horror simulation.
The game calculates stamina consumption based on the track length, but it also factors in your "Guts" (根性) stat. Guts acts as a modifier for how quickly that stamina drains during the final spurt. Basically, higher Guts makes your stamina last longer when the pressure is on. If you're running a 3200m race like the Tenno Sho Spring, you aren't just looking at a raw number; you're looking at a complex interaction between your base pool and your recovery skills.
For a Medium distance race (2000m-2400m), you’re usually aiming for a uma musume stamina threshold of around 700 to 800 if you don't have gold recovery skills. If you do have a gold heal like "Arc Maestro" (円弧のマエストロ), you can afford to skim that down to maybe 600 or 650. But beware. Weather and track conditions like "Heavy" or "Bad" ground (道悪) act as a hidden tax. They drain your energy faster. If you're building for a specific PVP event and the forecast says rain, you better over-spec by at least 50 points or bring an extra recovery trigger.
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Why Strategy Changes Everything
Your running style—Runner (逃げ), Leader (先行), Betwixt (差し), or Chaser (追込)—massively shifts your needs. It’s not a one-size-fits-all deal.
Runners are the most stamina-hungry. They fight for the lead early, and if another Runner challenges them, they enter a "Position Fight" that burns through their reserves like a jet engine. If you're running Kitasan Black or Mihono Bourbon, you cannot skimp. You're looking at needing nearly 10-15% more stamina than a Chaser might for the exact same distance.
Chasers like Gold Ship or Narita Taishin have it a bit easier in the early phases, but their "Spurt" is more explosive. If they run out of juice halfway through their final charge, they won't just slow down; they’ll get "blocked" by the pack because they don't have the energy to maneuver.
The Skill Factor: Gold Heals vs. White Heals
Don't fall into the trap of thinking five white recovery skills equal one gold one. It doesn't work that way. Gold skills like "Eat It Up" (食いしん坊) or "Pure Heart" (好転一息) provide a massive, instantaneous chunk of stamina back. In terms of raw stats, a single Gold recovery skill is roughly equivalent to 150 to 200 points of raw Stamina.
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However, skills can fail to trigger. If your Intelligence (智力) is low, your girl might just... forget to eat her snack. This is why top-tier players never rely solely on skills to hit their uma musume stamina thresholds. You want enough raw stat to survive a "no-skill" run, with the skills acting as a buffer to ensure you can Spurt at maximum intensity for the longest possible duration.
The Tenno Sho Spring: The Ultimate Test
If you can build a horse for the Tenno Sho Spring, you can build for anything. This 3200m beast is the graveyard of a million training runs. To even stand a chance, you're looking at a raw Stamina stat of 1000+ or 850 with at least two Gold recovery skills.
I've seen players try to "cheese" it with high Speed and low Stamina. It never works. At about the 2800m mark, the "tired" animation kicks in, and the Speed stat becomes irrelevant. A horse with 1200 Speed and 400 Stamina will lose to a horse with 600 Speed and 1000 Stamina every single time on this track. It's just physics.
Common Misconceptions About Guts
For a long time, the global community thought Guts was a "trash stat." That’s outdated info. Since the 1.5 and 2.0 anniversary updates, Guts has become a critical component of the stamina equation. While it doesn't give you a bigger pool, it reduces the "cost" of sprinting.
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If you're hitting a wall where you have 900 Stamina but still losing steam, look at your Guts. If it’s sitting at 300, that’s your problem. Raising Guts to 600 can effectively feel like you added another 100 points to your Stamina pool during the final stretch of the race. It also helps with "Last Spurt" speed, meaning you aren't just surviving—you're actually competing.
Adjusting for Champion’s Meeting (PVP)
In PVP, the meta is ruthless. Players will bring "Debuff" girls (often called "Nice Nature" builds) specifically designed to drain your stamina. Skills like "Stamina Greed" or "Pressure" can shave off 50-100 points of your effective stamina instantly.
If you're entering a Grade League tournament, "just enough" is actually "not enough." You need a "debuff buffer." Usually, this means aim for about 100 points over the theoretical threshold or packing an extra "Normal" (white) recovery skill just in case you get hit by a flurry of red debuff icons at the start of the race.
Actionable Steps for Your Next Build
Stop guessing. If you want to stop losing to stamina depletion, change your workflow during the training phase.
- Check the Distance First: Before you even select your parents, look at the target race. 2000m is the turning point where Stamina starts to matter as much as Speed.
- Prioritize Power over Excess Stamina: If you hit 800 Stamina for a Medium race, stop. Put those points into Power. Power helps you climb hills, which otherwise drain your stamina like crazy.
- The 1-Gold Rule: For any race over 2000m, aim to have at least one Gold recovery skill. Super Creek’s "Arc Maestro" remains the gold standard because it triggers on corners, and almost every long-distance race has plenty of those.
- Intelligence Matters: Aim for at least 400 Intelligence even on long-distance builds. If your girl has 1200 Stamina but 200 Intelligence, she won't use her recovery skills, and she'll take suboptimal paths, wasting energy.
- Watch the Replays: Don't just skip the race results. Look at your girl in the final 200m. Is she panting? Is there a purple icon over her head? If yes, you missed the threshold. Bump the stat by 50 in the next run.
Mastering these thresholds isn't about memorizing a single table. It's about understanding that Stamina is the foundation. Speed is the ceiling, but Stamina is the floor. If the floor collapses, the height of the ceiling doesn't matter at all. Build your floor first. Reach the minimums for your distance, account for your running style, and then—and only then—worry about how fast you can go.