Bay Meadows Derby

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The Bay Meadows Derby is a Thoroughbred horse race for three-year-old horses of either gender on the Longden Turf Course at Bay Meadows Racetrack. Bay Meadows is in San Mateo, California where it opened in 1934 and is home to the longest-running stakes event in California: the Bay Meadows Handicap begun the same year as the track itself. (In 1937 and in 1938, Seabiscuit, ridden by the great jockey George Woolf, won the Handicap.)

During the Second World War tracks everywhere closed, but not Bay Meadows. The lights were on and the horses were racing in the darkest days of the war.

The Bay Meadows Derby first ran in 1954. That year's winner of the Kentucky Derby won the first Bay Meadows Derby, the California-bred Determine.

The Derby is a Grade III grass event set at one and one/eighth mile, and offers a purse of $100,000.