Arkansas Derby

The Arkansas Derby is held in April at Oaklawn Park in Hot Springs, Arkansas.

Open to three-year-olds and conducted at 1 1/8 miles on the dirt, it offers a purse of $1,000,000.

The inaugural Arkansas Derby in 1936 offered a total purse of $5,000. The first winner was Holl Image, owned and trained by Jack Carter.

Past winners have gone on to win American Classic Races such as 1980 winner Temperence Hill and 1998's Victory Gallop who both went on to capture the Belmont Stakes, plus Sunny's Halo won the 1983 Kentucky Derby as did Smarty Jones in 2004, and Elocutionist (1976), Tank's Prospect (1985), Pine Bluff (1992), and Curlin (2007) all won the Preakness Stakes. The 1994 winner, Concern, won that year's Breeders' Cup Classic along with Curlin in 2007.

In 2004, Oaklawn Park offered a $5 million bonus to any horse that could sweep the Oaklawn three-year-old graded stakes schedule: Rebel Stakes and the Arkansas Derby, and then take the Kentucky Derby. This helped increased particiaption from the top three-year-olds in the country to the point where the winners of four of the last nine Triple Crown races won the Arkansas Derby. Smarty Jones captured this feat the same year it was introduced.

The race was run in two divisions in 1960.