Any reliable way to spawn horse races?

[Andreisimonn]

Okay so I'm post-epilogue with nearly everything done besides a few challenges. I encountered the old man and beat him in a race a while ago (south of strawberry i think).

I encountered him again near Wallace Station, and I did beat him and get the horse speed upgrade, BUT he also killed my horse (which is apparently an unintended bug). Luckily I could reload from an older save and keep my horse, but now I want to get that upgrade back for completion's sake.

Been trying for a few days now, but no matter what I do I just can't get that damn npc to spawn. I keep going in circles around his spawn area, sleep camping, save and reloading, even the switching saddles at the nearest stable trick doesnt work. I tried other race npc locations too but no luck either.

Am I doing something wrong? Is it just bad luck? I read somewhere that the chance of race npcs spawning drops to 2% in the postgame, which sounds absurd but now I'm starting to believe its true. I might just give up at this point