Risen Star Stakes was run in two divisions in 1989, 1993 & 1995. The 2006 race was held at Louisiana Downs. Risen Star Stakes The Risen Star Stakes is an American Thoroughbred horse race run annually in February at the Fair Grounds Race Course. It is open to three-year-old horses and is raced over a distance of one and one-sixteenth miles on the dirt. A Grade II event, it currently offers a purse of $400,000. The race is the major prep race to the Louisiana Derby and one of many prep race preparing colts for the Kentucky Derby and the Triple Crown. The
American Quarter Horse resulting horse was small, hardy, and quick, and was used as a work horse during the week and a race horse on the weekends. As flat racing became popular with the colonists, the Quarter Horse gained even more popularity as a sprinter over courses that, by necessity, were shorter than the classic racecourses of England, and were often no more than a straight stretch of road or flat piece of open land. When matched against a Thoroughbred, local sprinters often won. As the Thoroughbred breed became established in America, many colonial Quarter Horses were included in the original American stud