The T J Smith Stakes is a Gr 1 Australian Weight for Age horse
race run in April each year over 1200m at Randwick Racecourse in
Sydney, and currently carries a lucrative purse of AUD$500,000.
The race was named after Tommy J. Smith, the legendary Australian
racehorse trainer who won many of the country's top races, including
the Melbourne Cup, the Golden Slipper, the W.S. Cox Plate, the
Caulfield Cup and many more.
The T J Smith Stakes was inaugurated in 1998, the same year that
Tommy J. Smith passed away. The race was run in 1996 and 1997, but
it was then called the Endeavour Stakes and was listed in 1997. In
the 1998 T J Smith Stakes, an extremely quick thoroughbred called
Baraka proved triumphant.
In 1998, the T J Smith Stakes was listed as a Gr 3 race and in 2002
it was awarded its Gr 2 listing. In 2005 it received its prestigious
Gr 1 listing, earning its rightful place as an important race in
Sydney's annual horseracing calendar. From then until now, the race
has yielded some superb winners, including 2008 victor, Apache Cat.
Trained by Greg Eurell, Apache Cat is a talented gelding who during
2008 chalked up wins in some of Australia's premier Gr 1 races
including the Lightning Stakes, the Australia Stakes, the BTC Cup
and the Doomben 10,000. Despite four losses in his 2009 season,
Apache Cat bounced back in February 2009 to win the Australia Stakes
for the second time. |
