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The Jockey Club Gold Cup is a prestigious thoroughbred horse race open to horses three years old and upward, established in 1919. It is typically the main event of the fall meeting at Belmont Park, just as the Belmont Stakes is of the spring meeting and the Travers Stakes is of the summer meeting at Saratoga.
It has often been the event in which horses who have done well in a year's United States Triple Crown races first face older opponents, on a weight-for-age basis. Seven horses have won the race twice (including a female, Shuvee) and the great Kelso won five times.
Despite its $1 million purse and Grade 1 status the stature of the race has suffered somewhat in recent years thanks to the emergence of the Breeders' Cup (held not long afterward) and the race's shortening to the more common distance of 1¼ miles in 1990, making it a less unique test. (The race was originally, and from 1976 through 1989, run at 1½ miles, and from 1921 through 1975 it was two miles long, second in distance only to the far less prestigious, 2¼-mile Display Handicap among American stakes races during this period). From 1958 through 1974, except for 1962 and 1968, the race was held at Aqueduct Racetrack instead of Belmont.
The 86th running, on October 2,2004, was won by Funny Cide, and perhaps the most memorable renewal was that of 1978, when Exceller defeated the previous year's Triple Crown winner, Seattle Slew, by a nose, with the 1978 Triple Crown winner, Affirmed, finishing fifth.
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