Gulfstream Championship meet stakes look similar for 2023-24

HALLANDALE BEACH, Fla. – If the stakes schedule for the 2023-24 Gulfstream Park championship meet, released Thursday, looks familiar, it should. The program nearly mirrors the schedule from last winter, highlighted once again by the $3 million Pegasus World Cup Invitational and the $1 million Florida Derby.

The Championship meet will kick off three weeks earlier than a year ago, on Dec. 1, and run through March 31. A new turf course, currently scheduled to open in December, has been installed and will host 38 stakes, weather permitting.

The 2023-24 schedule has added eight new stakes and will be worth $14.8 million in purses, up $1.2 million from the previous season. One of the few new wrinkles coming on the second card of the meet, on Dec. 2, features the finals of the Florida Sire Stakes series for 2-year-olds, the $300,000 In Reality and $300,000 My Dear Girl stakes. Both races had traditionally been decided two months earlier, since the inception of the event at Calder Racecourse in 1982.

The nine-furlong Pegasus World Cup Invitational highlights a card on Jan. 27 that features eight stakes, seven of which are graded, and also includes the $1 million Pegasus World Cup Turf Invitational and the $500,000 Pegasus World Cup Filly and Mare Turf. The Pegasus World Cup, which had its inaugural running in 2017, is the first major target of the new racing season for the distance handicap division and has a past roster of winners led by Arrogate, Gun Runner, and Knicks Go, among others. The race was won earlier this year by Art Collector.

The nine-furlong, Grade 1 Florida Derby will be renewed on March 30 as part of an outstanding card featuring nine other stakes, five graded, including the Grade 2 Gulfstream Park Oaks for 3-year-old fillies and Grade 2 Pan American. The Florida Derby will offer 100 qualifying points to the winner for the 2024 Kentucky Derby.

The Florida Derby, whose roster of starters features 25 Kentucky Derby winners, including Mage in 2023, is the fourth and last key Kentucky Derby prep of the meet that, as always, begins with the one-mile Mucho Macho Man on New Year’s Day and continues with the Grade 3 Holy Bull and Grade 2 Fountain of Youth on Feb. 3 and March 2, respectively.