Super Derby returns to dirt after one year on turf

The Super Derby will move back to dirt after a one-year turf experiment in one of several changes to the marquee race at Louisiana Downs.

The track, which announced its stakes schedule Monday, opens its 84-date meet on May 5.

The Super Derby will be held on Sept. 2 - a week earlier than last year - and it moves from a Saturday card to a Sunday. In another change, the purse of the race will be $300,000, up from last year’s $200,000.

Louisiana Downs also has addressed the distance of the Super Derby. It will be run over 1 1/16 miles, which is the same as last year but shorter than its recent dirt runnings, which have come over 1 1/8 miles.

Finally, the race has had its Grade 3 status reinstated by the American Graded Stakes Committee with the move back to dirt for 2018. The restoration of the grade was announced by the committee in a memo last Friday.

"The committee has reviewed this change from 2017," the memo read, "and has determined that because the race will be reverting to its historical conditions after only one year as a turf race and has run under those historical conditions in two of the last three years, the race’s Grade III status will be reinstated for 2018."

The Super Derby will anchor a card of seven stakes, with the races worth a total of $660,000. The meet’s richest program includes a pair of $60,000 stakes for 2-year-olds at a mile on turf: the Happy Ticket and the Sunday Silence.

The prep for the Super Derby, the $60,000 Prelude, will be run Aug. 4. It, too, has returned to dirt after being run on turf last year. The winner of the Prelude will again earn a fees-paid berth into the Super Derby. The Prelude will share a card with six Louisiana Cup stakes, featuring different divisions for horses bred in Louisiana.

Louisiana Downs will race through Sept. 26.