For Eclipse Award champion Essential Quality and fellow multiple Grade 1 winner Maxfield, their retirement to stud marks a proud homecoming. Both colts are homebreds for Sheikh Mohammed al-Maktoum’s international operation, and raced in the Godolphin blue while based in Kentucky throughout their careers. Essential Quality was trained by Brad Cox, and Maxfield by Brendan Walsh. They both now enter stud for 2022 as two of the most expensive stallions in North America for Darley at its Jonabell Farm location in Lexington, Ky. “It’s extremely exciting,” said Michael Banahan, Godolphin’s American director of farm operations. “To have two horses like that, to have two homebred colts come through the program, can’t ask for any better than that,” he added. Essential Quality, by perennial leading sire Tapit, is the most expensive incoming stallion in North America for 2022, with an advertised fee of $75,000. He has the credentials to back that up. The gray colt earned the Eclipse Award as champion 2-year-old male with an unbeaten campaign including Grade 1 victories in the Breeders’ Futurity and the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile, both at Keeneland. This year, he won 5 of 7 outings, topped by Grade 1 triumphs in the Belmont and Travers stakes. He was the first winner of the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile, inaugurated in 1984, to return and win the following year’s Belmont; he was the third Juvenile winner to come back and win the classic-distance Travers, joining Chief’s Crown (1984-85) and Street Sense (2006-07). Essential Quality also won the Grade 2 Blue Grass, Grade 2 Jim Dandy, and the Grade 3 Southwest in 2021. His only losses came when he finished fourth with a wide trip in the Kentucky Derby and a third against older horses in the Breeders’ Cup Classic at Del Mar, his career finale. “I was very proud of what he was able to accomplish over the last year and a half, and I’m looking forward to training his babies,” Cox said. Should Essential Quality be voted the Eclipse Award champion 3-year-old male – outpolling top rival Medina Spirit – he would join an exclusive club. Since the advent of the modern Eclipse Awards beginning with the 1971 racing season, the only colts to earn the divisional Eclipse at 2 and be voted atop the class again at 3 are Secretariat (1972-73), Seattle Slew (1976-77), Affirmed (1977-78), Spectacular Bid (1978-79), Lookin At Lucky (2009-10), and American Pharoah (2014-15). “I think he deserves to be champion 3-year-old,” Cox said. “He has two big Grade 1s, two very prestigious wins in the Belmont and Travers. He was able to have a campaign all year. It started in the Southwest, he ran a big one in the Blue Grass. The Derby obviously didn’t work out quite the way we would have liked, but he was able to follow it up with a spectacular summer at Saratoga. And then to come [to Del Mar], and I really think he performed very well.” Essential Quality, who is from the family of Eclipse champion filly Folklore and Japanese Triple Crown winner and champion Contrail, arrived at Darley the week after the Breeders’ Cup in early November. He settled in calmly and began formally showing to breeders at an open house during the Kentucky November breeding stock sales. “He is a very classy, intelligent horse, and his behavior has belied his age and length of time at the farm.” Darley sales manager Darren Fox said. “His first day showing was extremely windy, so much so that Medaglia d’Oro was on his toes, yet Essential Quality never turned a hair and struck a pose and stance on his first show like he had done it a thousand times before. We were all in awe of him, and he has pretty much continued on from there.” With the focus on assembling first books for new stallions, Essential Quality is in high demand both domestically and internationally. “He has been very popular, as you might expect,” Fox said. “Keeping him at his target number of mares certainly won’t be easy, but he is on track to cover a high-caliber first book. As a result [of Contrail], there has been some interest from Japan. Being a champion 2-year-old and being by Tapit, after Frosted’s fast start in Australia, could offer some appeal Down Under.” Maxfield, like Essential Quality, posted his first stakes victory in the Grade 1 Breeders’ Futurity at Keeneland, in the fall of 2019. However, his career took a winding road after that. An issue with his right front foot forced him out of the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile and initially ruled him off the 2020 Kentucky Derby trail. When that Derby was postponed to September by the coronavirus pandemic, Maxfield again emerged among the contenders when he returned to action with a victory in the Grade 3 Matt Winn in May at Churchill Downs. But he sustained a condylar fracture in a workout the following month that again shelved him. Trainer Walsh persisted with patience and brought Maxfield back to top form. Beginning in December 2020, Maxfield put together his first uninterrupted campaign, with eight starts that included victories in the Tenacious Stakes, Grade 3 Mineshaft, Grade 2 Alysheba, Grade 2 Stephen Foster, and, finally, the Grade 1 Clark, which vindicated the careful planning. Maxfield had been second to likely Horse of the Year Knicks Go in the Grade 1 Whitney in August, and then second to Art Collector in the Grade 1 Woodward in early October. In search of a Grade 1 victory to end his career, Godolphin and Walsh elected to pass on the Breeders’ Cup Classic – and a head-to-head with the owner’s Essential Quality – in favor of a brief freshening and a final Grade 1 at a track where Maxfield is unbeaten, Churchill Downs. “With having Essential Quality in the Classic, it gave us the opportunity to run Maxfield here in the Clark, which is obviously a very prestigious race, and sort of a vision of Sheikh Mohammed, as well, with our breeding program and our homebreds to try and achieve the best results that we can,” Banahan said. “It gave us an opportunity to split those horses up and end up having a big win here with the Clark. “A great result for Brendan and his team, who have nursed the horse through some ups and downs over the last three years.” Maxfield has deep roots in the Darley stallion barn. The colt will stand alongside his sire, Street Sense, himself a son of a Darley lynchpin in the late Street Cry. Maxfield also is out of a mare by the late Bernardini, who is a Darley homebred champion and leading sire. “His initial physical impression is all Street Sense, yet I see a lot of Bernardini in Maxfield’s head and eye,” Fox said. “His class and composure and the look he gives you is somewhat reminiscent of Bernardini. With Bernardini setting records as a broodmare sire, it is extra special to stand an exciting maternal grandson of his. Maxfield represents Jonabell through and through.” Maxfield, who will stand for $40,000, vanned home to that Darley stallion barn the day following the Clark, leaving Walsh with a sense of satisfaction. “It’s fantastic to see him do what he did,” Walsh said, reflecting on the Clark. “He had to dig in in a battle against a couple very good horses. I think a lot of people were questioning, ‘Is he that good, is he this, is he that?’ You don’t go 8 for 11 in your career and not finish outside of the first three ever without being an excellent horse. It’s just fantastic to see him finish like that. I hope to train plenty of his babies, because if they’re anything like him, they’ll be an absolute pleasure.”