Blue Grass Stakes
The Toyota Blue Grass Stakes, currently sponsored by the Toyota Motor Corporation, is an American Grade 1 horse race for 3-year-old Thoroughbreds held annually in mid April at Keeneland Racecourse in Lexington, Kentucky.
It was named for the Bluegrass region of Kentucky, characterized by grass having bluish-green culms, which is known as the "heart" of the thoroughbred racing industry.
First run at the Kentucky Association track in Lexington in 1911, the Blue Grass has, from its inception, served as an important prep for the Kentucky Derby. At the Association track, the Blue Grass was staged from 1911 through 1914 and from 1919 through 1926. The race was revived at Keeneland in the spring of 1937. In 1943-1944, the Blue Grass was renewed as a part of the Keeneland-at-Churchill Downs meeting. In 1945, the Blue Grass was run as part of the Churchill Downs meeting. Today it is part of the Keeneland program.
The race is run at a distance of one and one-eighth miles on synthetic.
Read more about Blue Grass Stakes: Records, Winners of The Blue Grass Stakes
Famous quotes containing the words stakes, blue and/or grass:
“Law makes long spokes of the short stakes of men.”
—William Empson (1906–1984)
“At twelve, the disintegration of afternoon
Began, the return to phantomerei, if not
To phantoms. Till then, it had been the other way:
One imagined the violet trees but the trees stood green,
At twelve, as green as ever they would be.
The sky was blue beyond the vaultiest phrase.”
—Wallace Stevens (1879–1955)
“They live everywhere
on forest grass and water
that they’ve taken for themselves
and even then,
the love of a buck and his doe
ends only in death.”
—Hla Stavhana (c. 50 A.D.)