The Test Stakes is an American Thoroughbred horse race open to three-year-old fillies and run each summer at the Saratoga Race Course in Saratoga Springs, New York. It is contested at a distance of seven furlongs on the dirt and is an influential race in shaping the Breeders' Cup Filly & Mare Sprint. A Grade I event, it carries a purse of $250,000.
In its 84rd running in 2009, it was first run at Saratoga in 1922. Over the years it has also become an important race for fillies pointing towards the Grade I Alabama Stakes which also runs at Saratoga Race Course.
Inaugurated at a mile and quarter, it went to seven furlongs in its second running. The Test Stakes took place at Belmont Park in 1943, 1944, and 1945. It was not run from 1923 to 1925 or in 1961. It was run in two divisions in 1960, 1962, 1963, 1965, 1966, 1967, 1970, 1973, 1974, 1975, 1977, 1978, and 1979.
Famous quotes containing the words test and/or stakes:
“I have come to believe ... that the stage may do more than teach, that much of our current moral instruction will not endure the test of being cast into a lifelike mold, and when presented in dramatic form will reveal itself as platitudinous and effete. That which may have sounded like righteous teaching when it was remote and wordy will be challenged afresh when it is obliged to simulate life itself.”
—Jane Addams (1860–1935)
“Law makes long spokes of the short stakes of men.”
—William Empson (1906–1984)