Laurel adjusts fall stakes schedule

The Laurel Park fall stakes schedule will have approximately the same value and number of stakes as a year ago, but there are some notable changes.

With the exception of the brief Preakness meet at Pimlico, the fall meet has the best stakes schedule of the year in Maryland. Excluding Maryland Million Day, which is still being finalized, the fall stand will have 34 stakes worth just over $3.4 million.

The Grade 3, $200,000 Commonwealth Derby and Grade 3, $150,000 Commonwealth Oaks have been dropped this year. A new turf race, the $150,000 Bald Eagle Derby, has been added. The Find and the All Brandy, $75,000 races for Maryland-bred or -sired horses, which were last run in the summer of 2017, have been brought back.

The purses of the Commonwealth Derby and Oaks in recent years have been split by the Maryland horsemen and the Virginia Equine Alliance and Virginia HBPA. The Virginia organizations requested permission from the Virginia Racing Commission to fund those races in their entirety this year, but were denied.

The races will keep their grade until 2019, when they are expected to be brought back at Colonial Downs, if the track reopens as expected.

The Bald Eagle Derby is a 1 1/2-mile turf race for 3-year-olds on Sept. 29. It is named for the two-time winner of the Washington D.C. International. Jockey Manny Ycaza, who died last week, rode Bald Eagle in both of those races for trainer Woody Stephens.

“We positioned it to attract horses who ran in the Belmont Derby and Secretariat at Arlington,” said Sal Sinatra, president of the Maryland Jockey Club.

The major races of the meet include the Grade 3, $250,000 Frank J. De Francis Memorial Dash, which will be run at six furlongs on Sept. 15, and the Grade 3, $200,000 Baltimore-Washington Turf Cup, a one-mile race on Sept. 29.

“We are very strong in September,” Sinatra said. “We wanted to kick off the fall turf season in a big way. We have six turf stakes on the De Francis card and then we run the Baltimore-Washington Turf Cup and Bald Eagle at the end of the month.”

Four other days of the meet, which begins Sept. 7 and runs through Dec. 30, have five stakes or more, including Maryland Million, which last year consisted of 11 stakes worth more than $1 million.

De Francis Day will include the final legs of three divisions of the MATCH Series. The De Francis is the finale for the dirt sprinters, the Laurel Dash concludes the turf-sprint division, and the Sensible Lady Turf Dash wraps up the filly and mare turf-sprint series.