The United Nations Stakes is an American Thoroughbred horse race held annually in July at Monmouth Park in Oceanport, New Jersey. The race is open to horses, age three and up, going one and three-eighths miles on the turf. A Grade I event, it currently offers a purse of $750,000. Until 2007, it was known as the United Nations Handicap.
Part of the Breeders' Cup Challenge series, the winner of the 2008 United Nations Stakes automatically qualified for the Breeders' Cup Turf.
Founded in 1953 at the Atlantic City Race Course in Mays Landing, New Jersey, the race was set at a distance of 1 3/16 miles until 1999 when it was changed to 1 3/8 miles. The first edition was won in track record time by the Chilean bred, Iceberg II, who was trained by future U.S. Racing Hall of Fame inductee Horatio Luro and ridden by Jorge Contreras.
From 1990 through 1997, it was known as the Caesars International. No race was held in 1998 and in 1999, it was shifted to Monmouth Park. In 2010, it will be in its 57th running.
Famous quotes containing the words united, nations and/or stakes:
“It is a united will, not mere walls, which makes a fort.”
—Chinese proverb.
“Of all the nations in the world, the United States was built in nobody’s image. It was the land of the unexpected, of unbounded hope, of ideals, of quest for an unknown perfection. It is all the more unfitting that we should offer ourselves in images. And all the more fitting that the images which we make wittingly or unwittingly to sell America to the world should come back to haunt and curse us.”
—Daniel J. Boorstin (b. 1914)
“Law makes long spokes of the short stakes of men.”
—William Empson (1906–1984)