History
The event was established in 1823, and it was originally open to horses of either gender. For a period it was contested over a mile, and it was shortened to 6 furlongs in 1870. It was extended to 7 furlongs in 1962, and restricted to male horses in 1988.
The Champagne Stakes is held during Doncaster's four-day St. Leger Festival, and it is currently run on the final day, the same day as the St. Leger Stakes.
The leading horses from the race sometimes go on to compete in the following month's Dewhurst Stakes.
Read more about this topic: Champagne Stakes (Great Britain)
Famous quotes containing the word history:
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—Ellis Meredith, U.S. suffragist. As quoted in History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 4, ch. 14, by Susan B. Anthony and Ida Husted Harper (1902)
“No one is ahead of his time, it is only that the particular variety of creating his time is the one that his contemporaries who are also creating their own time refuse to accept.... For a very long time everybody refuses and then almost without a pause almost everybody accepts. In the history of the refused in the arts and literature the rapidity of the change is always startling.”
—Gertrude Stein (1874–1946)
“It is my conviction that women are the natural orators of the race.”
—Eliza Archard Connor, U.S. suffragist. As quoted in History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 4, ch. 9, by Susan B. Anthony and Ida Husted Harper (1902)