Count Fleet Stakes

Count Fleet Stakes
Ungraded Stakes race
LocationAqueduct Racetrack
Queens, New York
United States
Inaugurated1975
Race typeThoroughbred – Flat racing
Websitewww.nyra.com/index_aqueduct.html
Race information
Distance1 mile, 70 yards
SurfaceDirt
Trackleft-handed
QualificationThree-year-olds
WeightAssigned
PurseUS$65,000+

The Count Fleet Stakes is an American Thoroughbred horse race run at Aqueduct Racetrack, located in Jamaica, New York, at the beginning of January each year.[1] It is the first stakes race of the year run in New York City for three-year-olds.

Named after Count Fleet, the 1943 Triple Crown winner, the race is open to three-year-olds willing to race one mile and seventy yards on the inner dirt track.

Offering a purse of $65,000 added, the race is a prep to the Whirlaway Stakes, the Gotham Stakes, the Bay Shore Stakes and the Wood Memorial Stakes.

Inaugurated in 1975 as the Count Fleet Handicap at Belmont Park, it was run that year at a distance of one mile.[2] In 1976 it was raced at seven furlongs then from 1977 through 1983 at a mile and a sixteenth. It has been contested at a mile and seventy yards since 1984.[3]

There was no race run in 1982.

  1. ^ Count Fleet Stakes at Aqueduct Racetrack Archived 2011-01-14 at the Wayback Machine
  2. ^ New York Times – September 22, 1975
  3. ^ Count Fleet Stakes history at the NYRA Archived 2011-01-14 at the Wayback Machine