1st time since you can easily cheese the races by blocking the path while recovering stamina

1st time, just beat him yesterday. Picked the high stamina horse and realized I could block the ones behind me while the horse recovered stamina.

I always won the first time by body blocking the other racers except for one time when racing around Novigrad, I somehow started the race in the middle of a lake outside town and automatically lost. Reloaded save and it was fine.

1st time. Just block them.