Lone Star Park adds $300,000 Texas Derby; stakes schedule richest since 2011

Lone Star Park has added the $300,000 Texas Derby to its stakes schedule for 2020, the Dallas area track announced Friday. The mile and a sixteenth race will be run May 25 and the new Memorial Day feature will share a card with the $100,000 Lone Star Park Turf Stakes.

Lone Star will have a total of 12 stakes worth $1.4 million this meet, an increase of $300,000 from a year ago and the richest stakes calendar at the track since 2011, according to a press release.

The Lone Star season runs from April 16 through July 19.

The Texas Derby and the Grade 3, $300,000 Steve Sexton Mile, which will be renewed April 26, will be the meet’s biggest races. Lone Star also announced the Texas Derby will offer up $100,000 in incentives for horses bred in Texas.

The expanded stakes schedule comes following the passage of a Texas law in 2019 that calls for a portion of existing taxes on specified horse products and services to be placed in an escrow account that will be capped at $25 million a year. The funds, which began accruing Sept. 1, are tabbed for the betterment of the state’s breeding and racing industry.

Lone Star’s overnight purses will also increase for 2020, based on the first condition book posted on the track’s website. It shows maiden special weight races worth $34,000, first-level allowances worth $35,000, and no-conditions allowances worth $39,000.

Lone Star also has boosted all of its $50,000 stakes races to $75,000.

The annual Stars of Texas Day program of four restricted stakes is July 12.