The Iroquois Handicap run at Belmont Park on Long Island, New York in the fall of the year, is a 7 furlong race for Thoroughbred fillies and mares, aged three and up, that are New York-bred. It offers a purse of $125,000.
Set at a mile and an eighth before 1981, at a mile from 1981 to 1984, a mile and 70 yards from 1985 to 1987, at six furlongs from 1989 to 1993, it is now at seven furlongs. In 1996, it ran at Aqueduct Racetrack.
The Iroquois Handicap is named for the Iroquois Indian Nation who still inhabit some of the region that now includes central New York State.
Famous quotes containing the words iroquois and/or handicap:
“While the very inhabitants of New England were thus fabling about the country a hundred miles inland, which was a terra incognita to them,... Champlain, the first Governor of Canada,... had already gone to war against the Iroquois in their forest forts, and penetrated to the Great Lakes and wintered there, before a Pilgrim had heard of New England.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“I have the handicap of being born with a special language to which I alone have the key.”
—Gustave Flaubert (1821–1880)