The Arkansas Derby is an American flat Thoroughbred horse race for three-year-olds held annually at Oaklawn Park in Hot Springs, Arkansas. It is currently a Grade I race run over a distance of 9 furlongs on dirt.
In 2004, Oaklawn Park offered a $5 million bonus to any horse that could sweep its three-year-old graded stakes, the Rebel Stakes and the Arkansas Derby, and then take the Kentucky Derby. This helped increase participation from the top three-year-olds in the country to the point where the American Graded Stakes Committee made the Arkansas Derby a Grade I race in 2010. Smarty Jones was the first horse to collect the bonus.
Past winners of the Arkansas Derby have gone on to win many American Classic Races. 1980 winner Temperence Hill and 1998's Victory Gallop both went on to capture the Belmont Stakes. Sunny's Halo won the 1983 Kentucky Derby as did Smarty Jones in 2004. Elocutionist (1976), Tank's Prospect (1985), Pine Bluff (1992), Smarty Jones (2004) all won the Preakness Stakes. The 1994 winner, Concern, won that year's Breeders' Cup Classic.
The inaugural Arkansas Derby in 1936 offered a total purse of $5,000. The first winner was Holl Image, who was owned and trained by Jack Carter.
The race was run in two divisions in 1960.
Read more about Arkansas Derby: Records, Winners of The Arkansas Derby Since 1936
Famous quotes containing the word arkansas:
“The man who would change the name of Arkansas is the original, iron-jawed, brass-mouthed, copper-bellied corpse-maker from the wilds of the Ozarks! He is the man they call Sudden Death and General Desolation! Sired by a hurricane, dam’d by an earthquake, half-brother to the cholera, nearly related to the smallpox on his mother’s side!”
—Administration in the State of Arka, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)