Belmont star shows true class,
Not many horses in recent years have been better named than Essential Quality, winner Saturday of the 153rd Belmont Stakes.
Winning all three starts as a
3-year-old, two of them Grade I stakes, the Tapit colt displayed the speed and staying power required of a juvenile champion.
Winning the Kentucky Derby demands nothing less, though sometimes a little luck is needed.
In the biggest race of his life, Essential Quality did not get the fast pace needed to enhance his late kick. He ran fourth at Churchill Downs, his 5-0 record tarnished, beaten one length by Medina Spirit, who led the Derby’s mile and a quarter under minimal pressure.
Brad Cox, his soft-spoken trainer, was unusually bold the morning after that, wide on both turns, beaten by a horse getting a perfect trip, Essential Quality might have been best in the Derby. That was enough for internationally famous Godolphin Stables, which bred and owns Essential Quality, not to enter the Preakness. Winning the Belmont Stakes could make the troubled Derby favorite the leader in the 3-year-old division.
Thus did Essential Quality win a Belmont to rank with the best ever seen in the June classic.After a few lean years for Oaklawn-raced contestants in the series, Essential Quality is the first locally raced horse to cross the line first in the Triple Crown since Creator in the 2016 Belmont. The only Oaklawn-raced horse in Saturday’s field of eight, EQ is the first Southwest winner of the Belmont, his 3-year-old debut coming Feb. 27 over a sloppy track on the weekend that Cox brought back two-time champion racemare Monomoy Girl to win the Grade 3 Bayakoa in the
6-year-old’s first local race. The first Triple Crown winner for Cox comes a year after the 41-year-old Louisville native received his first Eclipse Award as the sport’s leading trainer. Three years after scoring his first Grade 1 victory, Cox comes off a season that two of his horses were named champions and that four won Breeders’ Cup races.
He is just now getting the attention with 3-year-old colts that he gained with fillies winning the Kentucky Oaks twice in the last four years. Racing fans know Cox as someone who can with all kinds of horses, first-timers and turfers alike. His career is taking a Hall of Fame track with worlds yet to conquer.
Essential Quality, winning the Belmont by a length and a quarter, exhibited all of his skills in holding off Hot Rod Charlie, who also skipped the Preakness after running third in the Derby. All Hot Rod Charlie did was turn in one of the greatest losing performances ever seen in the Triple Crown.
More of a need-the-lead type than Essential Quality, Hot Rod Charlie posted the fastest opening quarter-mile in Belmont history. Moreover, his first half-mile was the fastest in the Belmont since Secretariat’s other-worldly 31-length romp in
1973.
Any horse going out in 22.78 and 46.19 seconds at a mile and a half figures to need oxygen long before the finish. But here was Hot Rod Charlie hanging tough down the same stretch that jockey Ron Turcotte looked over his shoulder to find Secretariat’s rivals hopelessly beaten.
Trainer Doug O’Neill, a twotime Derby winner, stood by jockey Flavien Prat’s ride.
“I knew Flavien is so confident in this colt, and this colt is so confident in Flavien,” O’Neill said after the race. “He rode with a lot of confidence, and I wouldn’t second-guess him, and I wouldn’t do anything different. We just got beat by a better horse today.”
Vindicating Prat’s decision to give up the mount on Rombauer, Hot Rod Charlie finished 11 1/4 lengths ahead of the Preakness winner, who ran third. When such a margin between the top two occurs in, say, a maiden race, one is reminded of the late Kim Brazzel’s handicapping tip when the second-place horse returns: “Caught a bear last time. He might be the bear today.”
Jockey Luis Saez, in his first Triple Crown victory, wisely took Essential Quality off the fast pace, to which Rock Your World and the outmatched France Go de Ina contributed. A horse with such tactical speed deserves respect at any distance, Essential Quality breaking no records with his mile-and-a-half time of 2:27.11 but, as horsemen say, doing it the right way. A head in front turning for home, Essential Quality increased his margin late in the Test of the Champion.
“I think we’ll be talking about these two for the rest of the year. They’ve separated themselves from the other 3-yearolds,” Hall of Fame jockey Jerry Bailey said on NBC.
A rousing Belmont restored the racing spotlight to the sport’s stars. At least for one day, we did not need Bob Baffert on center stage. Though the Hall of Fame trainer may have his record seventh Kentucky Derby expunged and is banned from tracks that host the Derby and Belmont, the Greatest Game goes on.
And in the sport’s biggest races, the winner’s essential quality is often demanded.