Bring back championship racing series

Twenty years ago this week, a field of 12 older horses lined up for the 1991 Donn Handicap at Gulfstream Park. Then as now, it was the first Grade 1 race of the year for the nation’s top older horses, but in 1991 it was the start of something even bigger: It was the first leg of the inaugural American Championship Racing Series, a short-lived innovation that may have been ahead of its time but seems well worth revisiting now.

The ACRS, conceived and administered by Barry Weisbord, was an attempt to organize the year’s major races for older horses leading up to the Breeders’ Cup Classic into a coherent and meaningful series. A bonus system offered $1.5 million to the four horses who accumulated the most points for 1-2-3 finishes in the Donn, Santa Anita Handicap, Oaklawn Handicap, Pimlico Special, Nassau County Handicap, Hollywood Gold Cup, Pacific Classic, Iselin and Woodward.

A generation later, it looks like a golden year. The series attracted consistently big fields, and what proved to be a deep division had repeated and meaningful matchups throughout the year while criss-crossing the country. Seven different horses won those nine races: Farma Way (Santa Anita Handicap, Pimlico Special) and Festin (Oaklawn, Nassau County) each won two, while Jolie’s Halo (Donn), Marquetry (Gold Cup), Best Pal (Pacific Classic), Black Tie Affair (Iselin) and In Excess (Woodward) each won one ACRS race in a division that also included Unbridled, Summer Squall, Pleasant Tap, and Flying Continental.

Farma Way won a $750,000 bonus for the best record in the series, with $375,000 going to Festin, $225,000 to Marquetry, and $150,000 to Jolie’s Halo. Black Tie Affair, however, won the Eclipse Awards as champion older male and Horse of the Year for finishing his season with five straight wins including the Breeders’ Cup Classic, where he beat a field full of ACRS veterans including Festin, Marquetry, Unbridled, Summer Squall, as well as the 3-year-olds Fly So Free and Strike the Gold.