The 2024-25 Gulfstream Park Championship meet will kick off a bit earlier than usual later this season, on Thanksgiving Day, Nov. 28, the opening-day program offering the first of 66 stakes races to be decided during the winter meet, which runs through March 30, 2025.
As always, the $3 million Pegasus World Cup Invitational, $1 million Pegasus World Cup Turf Invitational, and the $1 million Florida Derby will highlight the Championship meet and are three of 30 graded stakes on a schedule worth more than $15 million in purses.
Two-year-olds will be in the spotlight on the opening weekend of the meet, which features turf stakes for juveniles on Thursday and Friday and the $300,000 finals of the Florida Sire Stakes series on Saturday, Nov. 30.
Pegasus World Cup Day on Jan. 25 will offer eight stakes, seven of them graded, plus a pair of overnight handicaps, with purses on the card totaling $5.5 million. Other key races that afternoon will include the Grade 2 Pegasus Filly and Mare Turf Invitational and Grade 2 Inside Information for filly and mare sprinters.
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The Grade 1 Florida Derby will be run on closing day as the last of 10 stakes worth a total of $2.5 million. The card also features the Grade 2 Gulfstream Park Oaks and Grade 2 Pan American. The 1 1/8-mile Florida Derby continues to be among the most important of the Kentucky Derby preps each season, the race having produced the winners of 25 editions of that event, most recently Mage in 2023. The Gulfstream Park Oaks turned out to be a very key race itself earlier this year, with members of the lineup having already accounted for the Grade 1 Alabama (Power Squeeze), Grade 1 Test (Ways and Means), Grade 2 Black Eyed Susan (Gun Song), and Grade 3 Monmouth Oaks (Scalable).
As usual, the Florida Derby will be the highlight of an outstanding program for 3-year-olds offered at Gulfstream Park each winter. The series again kicks off with the one-mile Mucho Macho Man on Jan. 4 and also features the Grade 3 Holy Bull on Feb. 1 and Grade 2 Fountain of Youth on March 1.
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