Gulfstream Park’s Sunshine Meet will carry 14 stakes races worth $1.925 million, and the $225,000 Princess Rooney Stakes will sit at the center of the whole setup. The Grade 3, seven-furlong sprint for fillies and mares 3 and up is scheduled for Sept. 12 at Gulfstream Park in Hallandale Beach, Florida, with $250,000 from the Florida-Bred Incentive Fund included in the meet total.
That matters because the Princess Rooney is not just another stop on the calendar. It is a Breeders’ Cup Filly & Mare Sprint “Win and You’re In” qualifier, which gives owners and trainers a direct target for Del Mar on Oct. 31. The Sunshine Meet opens over Labor Day weekend and runs into the 2026-2027 Championship Meet, which is set to begin Thanksgiving Day, Nov. 26, giving horsemen a clear campaign map from early fall into winter.
The Sept. 12 program is built to attract more than one kind of runner. Along with the Princess Rooney, Gulfstream has slotted the $100,000 Bob Umphrey Turf Sprint and the $100,000 Ginger Punch, a combination that gives the opening weekend a dirt-and-turf stakes menu with real purpose. For barns deciding where to place their sprinters and mares, that kind of grouping matters: it creates a weekend worth shipping for, rather than a single race standing alone.
The Princess Rooney’s pull comes from history as much as the purse. The race is in its 40th year, having been inaugurated in 1985, and it has repeatedly mattered on the national sprint scene. Recent winners include Haulin Ice, Soul of an Angel and Ce Ce. Soul of an Angel used the Princess Rooney as a springboard to win the Breeders’ Cup Filly & Mare Sprint in 2024, while Ce Ce completed the same double in 2021. That record explains why the Sept. 12 renewal looks less like a local feature and more like an early read on the division.
Equibase lists Merry Meadow’s 1:09.29 winning time in 2015 as the fastest Princess Rooney clock since 1976, a reminder that Gulfstream’s seven-furlong test can produce a serious number when the right mare shows up. The field-building clues are already there: Florida-bred stakes, open two-year-old races and the Princess Rooney at the top, all of it designed to keep quality concentrated at the center of the meet.
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