Jockey Club Gold Cup, Flower Bowl moved back to Belmont; Travers tops Spa stakes
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There will be 73 stakes worth $23.575 million offered at the extended 2026 Saratoga meet, but two prestigious races that had been run at Saratoga the past five summers will be moved back to Belmont Park this fall.
The Grade 1 Jockey Club Gold Cup, a 1 1/4-mile dirt race for older males, and the Grade 2 Flower Bowl, a marathon turf race for females, will both be held at Belmont when the renovated track re-opens in mid-September. There has not been a fall meet conducted at Belmont Park since 2021. All downstate racing has taken place at Aqueduct since the fall of 2022 while Belmont underwent reconstruction.
The Jockey Club Gold Cup will anchor the Sept. 18 opening-day card of the Belmont fall meet, the New York Racing Association announced Thursday. The Flower Bowl, run at Belmont from 1978-2020, will be run at a date and distance to be announced later. At Belmont, the Flower Bowl was run at 1 1/4 miles, at Saratoga it was 1 3/8 miles.
The Grade 3 Waya Stakes, a marathon turf race for females, which had been run at Saratoga from 2006-20 before being moved to Aqueduct, will return to Saratoga this summer and be run Aug. 28.
There will be 46 cards of racing offered at Saratoga from July 3 through Sept. 7. The Grade 1, $600,000 Belmont Oaks for 3-year-old fillies on turf and the Grade 2, $500,000 Suburban, a 1 1/4-mile dirt race for older dirt males, two of four stakes run to be run July 4, each had their purses increased by $100,000.
The Grade 1, $150,000 Lonesome Glory Stakes, a steeplechase race typically run at Belmont in the fall, has been moved to Saratoga and renamed the Leo O’Brien, for the trainer who died in January. It will be run July 5 along with the Grade 3 Kelso and listed Harvey Pack Stakes.
The Kelso and Harvey Pack are two of 29 stakes – Grade 3s or listed – that received $50,000 purse increases. The Caress, a turf sprint for females which is upgraded to a Grade 2 for 2026, received a $75,000 purse increase. There are four stakes that had purse increases of $15,000 to make them worth $150,000.
The major Saturday stakes cards will have a familiar look to previous years. The Grade 1, $1.25 million Travers Stakes for 3-year-olds remains the richest race offered and highlights an Aug. 29 card that includes four other Grade 1s – the H. Allen Jerkens, Ballerina, Forego, and Personal Ensign – and the Grade 2 Lake Placid.
The Grade 1, $1 million Whitney will be one of four Grade 1 stakes held Aug. 8, a card that includes the Test, Fourstardave, and Saratoga Derby. There were six stakes scheduled on Whitney Day last year, but the Saratoga Special and Troy have been moved to different days.
The Grade 1 Hopeful for 2-year-olds and traditionally the closing-day feature will now be run Sept. 6, the penultimate day of the meet. The closing-day stakes will be the $200,000 Gio Ponti, a turf race for 3-year-olds previously run at Aqueduct; and the Funny Cide, a 2-year-old race for New York breds.
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