PA-Breds, Cathryn Sophia Head Parx Program

Six stakes and total purses of $845,000 for 11 races will be offered Sept. 3 when Parx Racing returns from a more than three-week break with a program for mostly Pennsylvania-bred runners.

The Saturday card, dubbed "Pennsylvania's Day at the Races," includes one open race—the $150,000 Princess of Sylmar Stakes, which attracted Cash is King's locally based Cathryn Sophia, winner of the Longines Kentucky Oaks (gr. I). The one-mile Princess of Sylmar for 3-year-old fillies serves as a prep for the $1 million Cotillion Stakes (gr. I), a 1 1/8-mile event for 3-year-old fillies Sept. 24 at Parx.

There are five $100,000 Pennsylvania-bred stakes on the Sept. 3 card, including the Roanoke for 3-year-olds and up at 1 1/16 miles. The race attracted Someday Farm's grade III winner Res Judicata and two from the Graham Motion barn: The Elkstone Group's Edge of Reality, winner of the Robellino Stakes for state-breds on turf at Hollywood Casino at Penn National Race Course last time out, and Augustin Stable's Forward Thinker, a regular in state-bred stakes who returns to dirt for the first time since July 2014.

The annual celebration of the Pennsylvania-bred program comes as the Pennsylvania Horse Breeders Association works to restore breeder and stallion award payments—about $6 million so far—that have been held up for about seven months because of problematic language in a new horseracing reform law.