Valedictory Stakes
horse race
The Valedictory Stakes is a Canadian Thoroughbred horse race run annually in late November or early December at Woodbine Racetrack in Toronto, Ontario. Open to horses age three and older, the Grade III stakes is contested on a synthetic "all weather" surface over a distance of 1+1⁄2 miles (12 furlongs).
History
Inaugurated as the Valedictory Handicap in 1952 at the Dufferin Park Racetrack, it was moved to the new Woodbine Racetrack for the 1956 running where it remained through 1960. From 1961 through 1993, the race was hosted by Greenwood Raceway; thereafter, the race returned to Woodine where it remains.
The Valedictory was originally run on dirt but in 2006 Woodbine switched to a synthetic "all weather" surface (originally Polytrack and then Tapeta starting in 2016). Always a longer distance race, over the years it has been contested at a variety of distances:
1952: 1+5⁄8 miles
1954–1955: 1+3⁄8 miles
1956–2019: 1+3⁄4 miles
2021-Present: 1+1⁄2 miles
The Valedictory was not run in 1953. The 2008 Valedictory was canceled due to extreme cold weather, while the 2020 edition was cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Valedictory was upgraded to grade III status in 2011. It is the final stakes event of the year at Woodbine racetrack, which is closed to Thoroughbred racing during the winter.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 18, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q17116251. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1952, 1956, 1960 and 1961.
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This entry incorporates text from “Valedictory Stakes” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.