2021 Eclipse Awards: Essential Quality

Essential Quality is seeking to become only the third 2-year-old male champion to repeat at 3 since 1979, when Spectacular Bid completed a streak of three straight that included Triple Crown winners Affirmed and Seattle Slew.

In the more than four decades since, as horses have raced fewer times and become more specialized, rare is the male horse who can lead his brethren at 2 and then move on to be the best the following year, when the demands include the Triple Crown races and potential starts in the fall against elders.

The only two to achieve this feat since Spectacular Bid are Lookin At Lucky, the top 2-year-old male of 2009 and 3-year-old male of 2010, and American Pharoah, who was champion 2-year-old male of 2014 and both champion 3-year-old male and Horse of the Year in 2015.

Essential Quality put himself in position to be added to the list with a terrific 2021 campaign, highlighted by a classic victory in the Grade 1 Belmont Stakes and then, two starts later, the Grade 1 Travers at Saratoga. He also won the Grade 3 Southwest at Oaklawn, the Grade 2 Blue Grass at Keeneland, and the Grade 2 Jim Dandy at Saratoga, giving him five stakes wins at four tracks in three states.

:: Full list of 2021 Eclipse Awards finalists, including profile stories

His only losses were a fourth-place finish in the Grade 1 Kentucky Derby – when racing wide throughout, beaten just one length – and a third-place finish in the Grade 1 Breeders’ Cup Classic, won by his Brad Cox-trained older stablemate Knicks Go, the favorite to be named both Horse of the Year and champion older dirt male for 2021.

Essential Quality won all three of his starts at 2, including the Grade 1 Breeders’ Cup Juvenile, and came into 2021 as a leading prospect for the Kentucky Derby. He won his two preps for the Derby and went off favored at Churchill Downs, but lost for the first time.

He rebounded by going on a three-race win streak of the Belmont, Jim Dandy, and Travers. He suffered only his second career loss in what turned out to be his final start, the Breeders’ Cup Classic, in which he went off favored and was beaten 3 1/2 lengths. That was his largest margin of defeat, and yet he earned his second-best Beyer Speed Figure, a 108, underscoring how well he ran that day. Essential Quality earned Beyers of 107 or better in three of his last four starts.

Essential Quality won eight times in 10 starts during his career and was 5 for 7 as a 3-year-old. Luis Saez rode him in every race except his first.

A gray/roan colt by Tapit out of the Elusive Quality mare Delightful Quality, Essential Quality was a homebred of Sheikh Mohammed’s Godolphin Racing. He’s staying in the family. Essential Quality is at Darley America, the Kentucky breeding operation of Sheikh Mohammed, preparing for his first season at stud in 2022.