Queen Elizabeth II Challenge Cup Stakes
The Queen Elizabeth II Challenge Cup is an American Thoroughbred horse race race for three-year-old fillies held annually since 1984 at Keeneland Race Course near Lexington, Kentucky. Run at a distance of one and one-eighth miles on the turf, the Grade I race currently offers a purse of $500,000. It is an important prep race to the Breeders' Cup Filly & Mare Turf.
The race was inaugurated on October 11, 1984, in honor of Britain's Queen Elizabeth II, who attended the Keeneland races, during her private visit to Central Kentucky, and who presented a trophy on that date.
Since inception, the race has been contested at various distances:
- 1984 - 1 1/16 miles on dirt
- 1985-1989 - 1 1/16 miles on turf
- 1990-present - 1 1/8 miles on turf
The Queen Elizabeth II Challenge Cup was a Listed race in 1984 and 1985, a Grade III race in 1986 and 1987, and a Grade II race from 1988 through 1990 after which it became a Grade I event.
Read more about Queen Elizabeth II Challenge Cup Stakes: Records, Winners of The Queen Elizabeth II Challenge Cup
Famous quotes containing the words queen, challenge, cup and/or stakes:
“Happy are your wives! Happy are these your servants, who continually attend you and hear your wisdom!”
—Bible: Hebrew, 1 Kings 10:8.
The queen of Sheba to Solomon.
“Seas of bright juice suffuse heaven.
The earth by the sky staid with, the daily close of their junction,
The heav’d challenge from the east that moment over my head,
The mocking taunt, See then whether you shall be master!”
—Walt Whitman (1819–1892)
“Sunday morning may be cheery enough, with its extra cup of coffee and litter of Sunday newspapers, but there is always hanging over it the ominous threat of 3 P.M., when the sun gets around to the back windows and life stops dead in its tracks.”
—Robert Benchley (1889–1945)
“This man was very clever and quick to learn anything in his line. Our tent was of a kind new to him; but when he had once seen it pitched, it was surprising how quickly he would find and prepare the pole and forked stakes to pitch it with, cutting and placing them right the first time, though I am sure that the majority of white men would have blundered several times.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)