Essential Quality, Maxfield to each make final start before heading to stud
Champion Essential Quality will be retired following the Breeders' Cup and will join the Kentucky stallion ranks for Sheikh Mohammed’s international Godolphin racing and Darley stallions operation, along with Maxfield, the farm announced Monday.
Stud fees for Essential Quality and fellow Grade 1 winner Maxfield, who both raced as homebreds in the Godolphin blue, will be announced following their upcoming final starts. Essential Quality is one of the leading contenders for the Breeders’ Cup Classic on Nov. 6 at Del Mar. Maxfield is bypassing the Breeders’ Cup to target the Grade 1 Clark Handicap on Nov. 26 at Churchill Downs.
“To have both Essential Quality and Maxfield coming to Jonabell is as exciting as it gets,” Darley sales manager Darren Fox said in a release. “And to have accomplished what they did as homebreds in the colors of Godolphin makes it even that much more meaningful. They consistently performed at the highest level, and if you add in their outstanding pedigrees and conformation, we feel very confident that their legacy will continue to grow through their future offspring.”
Essential Quality, by perennial leading sire Tapit and from the family of champions Folklore and Contrail, has won eight of nine career starts. He won the 2020 Breeders’ Cup Juvenile in an unbeaten Eclipse Award championship campaign, and this year, has won the Belmont Stakes and Travers Stakes to establish himself as one of the favorites for the Classic.
Maxfield has never been off the board in 10 career starts, with his biggest victory coming in the Grade 1 Breeders’ Futurity as a juvenile. A son of Darley stallion Street Sense, Maxfield is out of a Bernardini mare who is a half-sister to Grade 1 winner and successful sire Sky Mesa.
The Darley America stallion roster experienced a seismic change in July when Maxfield’s grandsire Bernardini, a homebred classic winner and champion who went on to a successful stud career, died. Essential Quality and Maxfield will join an existing nine-horse stallion roster that is topped by Medaglia d’Oro at a $100,000 fee. That fee represents a drop from Medaglia d’Oro’s advertised $150,000 fee for 2021, while Street Sense was the only top-tier stallion to get a raise for 2022, from $60,000 to $75,000.
“In addition to the excitement of two new stallions, we are hearing from breeders a great deal of optimism especially with the strong sales results this year,” Fox said. “It goes without saying that times were tough for the industry last year but ours is a resilient bunch and hope springs eternal for the coming year. All that said, we are still maintaining moderation when setting our fees with only one of our top-tier stallions returning from last year seeing an uptick in price at this time.”