Golden Gate stakes schedule same as last year's

Golden Gate Fields will offer the same 12 stakes it has for the past two years for its 96-day winter-spring meet, which opens Dec. 26. The stakes schedule is worth just more than $1 million.

Last year, Golden Gate shifted a pair of $100,000 turf races for California-breds, the Campanile and the Silky Sullivan, to the same weekend as the Grade 3 San Francisco Mile to create a weekend turf festival.

The idea was well enough received that racing secretary Patrick Mackey will do it again this year, with the $100,000 San Francisco Mile to be run Saturday, April 30, and the Campanile and Silky Sullivan the following day.

The Grade 3, $200,000 El Camino Real Derby will be run Saturday, Feb. 13. The 1 1/8-mile El Camino Real Derby will have its 35th running and offers Kentucky Derby eligibility points as well as Northern California’s largest purse of the year.

The meet’s other graded stakes race is the Grade 3 All American, run at one mile on the main track for a $100,000 purse.

The California Derby at 1 1/16 miles Jan. 16, a prep for the El Camino, is the only other $100,000 stakes on the winter-spring meet calendar.