The Southwest is ungraded!!!!!!!!!!???????????????????????

You have to be kidding me. It should be a grade one at the very least.
Check out the great "grade two" race that the Bayakoa brought us the other day. Now thats a great event to be listed as a grade two huh?

I think the Rebel should be a III, Southwest a II and the Arkansas Derby a I.

I'd reverse the Southwest and Rebel but other than that I agree.

I think I would agree with you. I made an error on that. Southwest a Grade III, Rebel a Grade II and Arkansas Derby a Grade I.

at least the rebel got graded status in '06. but yes, absolutely the ark derby should be a gr 1. has the same purse as the fla derby. matter of fact, aren't they the only two to have this size purse?
i said on another thread that the bluegrass should not be a gr 1 while the ark is a gr 2.

LMFAO!!! :D

And I believe that races that are restricted to state breds should not be Graded either.

A stakes is ineligible for graded status if it is restricted to state breds.

Haven't we heard this before?

Well I don't think you can compare the Bluegrass to the Arkansas Derby when it comes to a historical perspective. I don't think you can say....well this race is a Grade I, therefor we need to make this race a Grade I. I think you need to look at each race independently. But there is no doubt that the Arkansas Derby should be a Grade I.

Yeah you are right. I have no idea what I was thinking. I totally lost it there for a moment.

I always think that the Excelsior is a State Bred only race. My apologies.

What I also don't like is that we don't have a Grade I turf sprint. I think this is about the only type of race missing from the Grade I list.

The fact that the Virginia Derby and Arkansas Derby are still GII races is a joke. At least the Colonial Turf Cup finally reached graded status this year. How many GIII races out there feature half a mill in purse cash?

Its pretty common knowledge that races with any restrictions can not be graded. Not just state bred races, but races like stakes that are written for horses who have never won a stakes race.

Rock Hard Ten won that Malibu, Lava Man 2nd, Harvard Ave (yet another that was run over by the Smarty Train) 3rd. Harvard Ave did win a G2 though- I believe the Portero Grande or something?

Slot, a race has to be run for at least a certain number of continuous years before attaining graded status. I think its three but I am not sure.
The Colonial races will attain status once they hit the required years.
Believe it or not the Miesque and the Generous had the same thing happen when they first started out in Hollywood. Even though they drew great fields and hads lot of purse money, they had to pass the time threshold.
Same thing with the Delta race that was just made grade three this year.
In these cases the track or circuit is not being penalized, its that the race has to attain the criteria in number of consecutive years run in order to obtain graded status.

Gotcha...thanks for the explanation.

Last year's Arkansas Derby has turned out quite a few good runners. Aside from Flower Alley and Afleet Alex, you have quite a few other nice horses including Rush Bay and Wild Desert.

I believe that the race has to be run for 2 years under the same conditions.