What It Means
This is not an eligibility condition. Where the rest of a Plainridge program prints a coded rule about who may enter, BERGSTEIN names a specific race or series that the office ran under its own title, which is why it reads as a word rather than as a string of letters and figures.
The purse marks it out. Races on this card averaged about $2,847, and BERGSTEIN carried $10,000 to $27,700. A figure several times the everyday level is the clearest signal in the whole record that this was one of the meeting's feature events rather than an ordinary afternoon race.
No expansion of the name is asserted here, because the programs print the title without explaining who or what it honoured. What can be stated is exactly how it was used, and that is set out below straight from the cards themselves.
In the programs held here BERGSTEIN was carded 2 times for the pace (2), carrying purses from $10,000 to $27,700. The first appearance in this record is Jul 14, 2003 and the last is Jul 21, 2003, which gives a rough sense of how long the racing office kept the condition in rotation.
A named race is worth tracking across seasons in a way an ordinary condition is not. It tells you which afternoons the office built its season around, and the horses that turned up for it are usually the best the meeting could attract that year.
Every Running in the Record
Questions about this condition
Was BERGSTEIN raced at the trot or the pace?
Only at the pace — all 2 races.
What did BERGSTEIN pay?
Purses of $10,000 to $27,700. Purse is the money on offer for the race, split by finishing position, and it is the most reliable indicator of where a condition sat relative to the rest of the card.
When did BERGSTEIN last appear on a card?
2003-07-21, having first appeared on 2003-07-14. Both dates come from the surviving documents for those days.
What is the BERGSTEIN?
A named race carded 2 times at Plainridge for $10,000 to $27,700, first on 2003-07-14 and last on 2003-07-21. Named races sit outside the ordinary condition ladder — the purse is the clearest signal of that.
How often was BERGSTEIN carded?
2 races in the recovered record, 2003-07-14 to 2003-07-21. That is a count of surviving charts and entry sheets, so it is a floor rather than a total.