Picks and Ponderings: 2018 San Felipe Stakes Preview

The San Felipe Stakes (G2) will be run for the 81st time this year.  It is a Road to the Kentucky Derby race, with not only a $400,000 purse up for grabs but also 50, 20, 10, and 5 Kentucky Derby points available to the top four finishers.  Originally inaugurated in 1935 for colts and geldings aged three and up, the race was restricted to three-year-olds starting in 1941, and opened up to fillies as well starting in 1952.  Run at distances as short at six furlongs during its history, it has held steady at its current 1 1/16 mile distance since 1952.  Over the history of the San Felipe Stakes, five winners have gone on to win the Kentucky Derby later that year: Determine (1954), Affirmed (1978), Sunday Silence (1989), Fusaichi Pegasus (2000), and California Chrome (2014).  Bob Baffert has been the most successful trainer of all time in the San Felipe.  He has won the race six times, most recently with Mastery (2017).

Keep reading at Picks and Ponderings, and let me know your thoughts on the San Felipe (G2) in the comments!

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out /  Change )

Twitter picture

You are commenting using your Twitter account. Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out /  Change )

Connecting to %s

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.