Donn under fire

9:20 PM ET

The Donn is dead, or so reads the fine print on the announcement this week of plans to run the Pegasus World Cup at Gulfstream Park in January.

In order to secure a Grade 1 rating for the 1-1/8-mile main-track event, which is advertising a purse of $12 million plus incentives, track officials had to cannibalize one of their existing Grade 1 events that most closely matched the proposed conditions of the Pegasus World Cup’s nine furlongs on dirt. That race was the Donn Handicap, named for the family that owned and operated Gulfstream Park from 1944 until 1989.

More than a quarter of a century later, the Donn name became disposable in the face of Frank Stronach’s vision for a race that would challenge the Dubai World Cup for global purse supremacy. The legacies of James Donn Sr., his son James Jr., and grandson Doug already had receded into the mists of time, hurried along by a succession of owners and obscured by Stronach’s razing of the Gulfstream facility in favor of the shopping/racetrack complex of today.

The Donn Handicap was still a nice touch, though, acknowledging that Gulfstream Park had something of a history prior to its purchase by Stronach in 1999. Stronach, however, is more interested in making history rather than celebrating it, and so comes the Pegasus World Cup, fascinating in the abstract and a curiosity on paper that raises more questions than it answers.

The Dubai World Cup’s purse has been $10 million ever since the event was moved to Meydan in 2010. Along with a mega-day that tops $25 million, the Dubai World Cup is funded by the oil, trade, and tourist commerce run by the ruling Maktoum family and its friends.

The Pegasus World Cup is being advertised at $12 million, theoretically funded by a dozen million-dollar antes for the 12 proposed starters. Or, more accurately, the 12 starting positions because the actual starters need not be named right …

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