Eight Graded races were upgraded; three new Grade I and five new Grade II races were named; 13 new Grade III races were identified.  Twenty new Listed races and two new Listed-Restricted races were upgraded from non-Listed Black Type status.

In all, 24 races were downgraded, while 43 were upgraded.

The most consequential moves among races in the Mid-Atlantic were a pair of Grade 3 events that were knocked down to Listed status. Those two races were the Frank J. De Francis Memorial Dash at Laurel Park and the Parx Dash at Parx.

The De Francis, a six-furlong main-track race, was a Grade 1 from 1999 through 2009, and it was a race that became a champion-maker. Cherokee Run, Smoke Glacken, and Thor’s Echo all used wins in the De Francis to catapult to recognition as the year’s champion sprinter. Thor’s Echo, in 2006, came to Laurel three weeks after winning the Breeders’ Cup Sprint and posted a hard-fought win in the De Francis to lock up that year’s Eclipse as top sprinter.

The De Francis, a six-furlong main-track race, was a Grade 1 from 1999 through 2009, and it was a race that became a champion-maker. Cherokee Run, Smoke Glacken, and Thor’s Echo all used wins in the De Francis to catapult to recognition as the year’s champion sprinter. Thor’s Echo, in 2006, came to Laurel three weeks after winning the Breeders’ Cup Sprint and posted a hard-fought win in the De Francis to lock up that year’s Eclipse as top sprinter.

But with Maryland racing falling on hard times soon thereafter, so, too, did the De Francis. It was not run in 2008 or 2010 and subsequently lost its grade altogether. It regained graded status for the 2016 running, won by Ivan Fallunovalot, but the race has not regained the cache it once held, despite a sizable purse.

In fact, since it regained the grade, only one of its six winners has won any other graded stake in his career. That one, Switzerland in 2018, won graded or group stakes both before and after the De Francis. The rest – among them Jalen Journey, by DQ in 2021, local stalwart Laki in 2020 when the race was held on the same October day as the Preakness because of the pandemic, and Chublicious, in a four-horse field in 2017 – count the De Francis as their lone graded win.

The Parx Dash doesn’t have quite so glittering a history as does the De Francis, but the five-furlong turf test has been in its own right an important stop for East Coast turf sprinters. Inaugurated in 2011, it received Grade 3 status in 2013; that was the second of three consecutive wins in this event for the great fan favorite Ben’s Cat.

In addition to Ben’s Cat’s trio of Dash wins, Parx lover Pure Sensation also won this event three times, his wins coming in 2016, 2017, and 2019. Pure Sensation won eight graded events in his career, and remarkably enough, seven of them came at Parx; he also won the G3 Turf Monster four times.

But the Parx Dash was not run in 2020, as the pandemic wreaked havoc with Parx’s schedule. And fields in the Dash have been on the thin side in recent years; the favorite has been 6-5 or less in four straight editions, with The Critical Way winning in 2021 at odds of 3-10.

The new grades are in effect through January 2023.

Other moves among Mid-Atlantic stakes:

• The Prince George’s County Stakes, run on the Pimlico turf in 2021, was moved up from non-listed black type to Listed status;
• The Satin and Lace Stakes at Presque Isle Downs was moved down from Listed to non-listed black type.
• The Dave’s Friend Stakes at Laurel was downgraded from Listed to non-listed black type.

In all, there are five Grade 1 events contested in the region: the Preakness at Pimlico, the Haskell and United Nations at Monmouth Park, and the Pennsylvania Derby and Cotillion at Parx Racing.

LIST OF MID-ATLANTIC GRADED STAKES