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Travers Stakes
Stakes:
Grade I For 3-year-old thoroughbreds; 1 mile and
1/8 mile
Race type: Thoroughbred
Purse: $1,000,000 US
Location: Saratoga Race Course
- Arcadia, Saratoga Springs, N.Y., USA
Inaugurated: 1864
Track: Dirt, Left-handed
Weight: Colt/Gelding:
126 lbs (57.2 kg) Filly:
121 lbs. (54.9 kg)
Website: Saratoga
Race Course
Saratoga The Travers Stakes, held yearly at the
Saratoga Race Course in Saratoga Springs, New York,
is America's oldest stakes race in continuous existence.
First run in 1864, it was named so in honor of William
Travers, who had the Saratoga race track built the
year before, along with Leonard Jerome and John
Hunter.
The race was inaugurated in 1864 at Saratoga Race
Course and has been run in all but five years since,
and with all but three runnings at Saratoga. Due
to war-time restrictions on travel, the 1943, 1944
and 1945 Saratoga meetings were conducted at Belmont
Park.
Travers was a prominent businessman in New York
City for most of his life, and for many years, bred
and owned some of the period's better horses.
The inaugural meeting at Saratoga was short and
sweet. The Travers Stakes was the highlight of the
meeting, being named, of course, for one of the
track's founders and its first president.
That Travers and Hunter co-owned the first winner,
a colt named Kentucky, of the race named for Travers
is not unusual during those times. In the 1800s,
the men who built racetracks were often the ones
who bred and owned many of the best horses at these
meetings. They built tracks to showcase their horses
more than to make money. |
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