This article is about the event previously held at Belmont Park and the Saratoga Race Course as the Forbidden Apple Stakes. For the event held at Belmont Park that was previously known as the Kelso Handicap, see Forty Niner Stakes.
The event's inaugural running was on Independence Day in 2014 at Belmont Park in Elmont, New York as the seventh race on the ten race holiday card and was won by Shadwell Stable's Sayaad who defeated the favorite Kharafa in a five horse field by 2+1⁄4 lengths in a time of 1:38.27 on a soft yielding turf track.[2]
From 2014 until 2018 the event was held at Belmont Park.[3]
In 2023 NYRA announced that the event would be renamed to the Kelso Stakes.[6] The event was renamed in honor of Kelso, Allaire du Pont's five-time winner of American Horse of the Year honors. Kelso won the Jockey Club Gold Cup at Belmont Park five times (1960–1964) consecutively at the then distance of 2 miles on the dirt.