Patient approach has proven the key to Spring Quality

Halfway through his 6-year-old season and Spring Quality’s lifetime running lines still almost all fit in the past performance pages for Saturday’s 36th edition of the Arlington Million.

Six years old, 11 times started.

The gelding’s career has gone along like a teenager learning to drive a stick shift.

Debut at 2. Stop. Some training at age 3, but no races. One start at 4. Stop. Another layoff of nearly a year.

For now, finally, the lurches and squeals have faded. The ride has been smooth for more than a year, and with clear passage and any further improvement, Spring Quality can carry a set of famous silks – white and green halves, white sleeves – into the Arlington winner’s circle early Saturday evening.

The silks are important, at least the force behind them. They belong to the Augustin Stable of George Strawbridge. When Spring Quality needed time – and he needed plenty of time – Strawbridge gave it to him. Waiting months on end for a race does not come easily to the average Thoroughbred owner. Here, there was never a question of taking any other road.

“It’s less and less likely in this day and age to have an owner like that,” said Graham Motion, who trains Spring Quality.

It was never any one thing with Spring Quality, according to his trainer. No blown tendon or slab fracture or something major and permanently compromising. He was just an enormous bay horse fast enough to win going seven furlongs on dirt in his career debut during October of his 2-year-old season – fast enough to stress a massive young frame. Spring Quality was gelded as a 4-year-old, after which he was free, during his many months at Strawbridge’s Brandywine Farm in Southeastern Pennsylvania, to cavort with companions when adequately sound.

“He could roam with the other geldings around an enormous field we have with a great hill on it,” said Strawbridge. “That kept him tuned up and well exercised, and when he came back in training he’d not be a slack horse but a fairly fit horse. We absolutely would not have this horse if we hadn’t shown patience. He’s always shown better-than-average ability, and we thought it was worth the time.”

Strawbridge already had plenty of time invested in Spring Quality when the horse was foaled in 2012.

Strawbridge’s equine holdings a half-century ago leaned heavily to steeplechasers, but in 1971 he bought three Thoroughbred yearlings. One was a filly named Fast Approach, who, still unstarted, got loose on the Atlantic City backstretch, crashed into something, and hurt herself to the extent racing was out of the question.

But as a broodmare Fast Approach begat a filly named First Approach, who became a stakes winner before producing 11 horses that raced. The best of those was named Alice Springs. Alice Springs had seven offspring to race, including one named Spring Star, who in 2012 dropped a colt that would be named Spring Quality. It took five generations of Strawbridge-owned horses to get to Spring Quality.

“It’s almost painful to think about how long ago that was with Fast Approach,” Strawbridge, 80, said, reached by phone this week. “This is my oldest family – a terrific family.”

Spring Quality enters the Million after winning the Grade 1, $1 million Manhattan Stakes, a race quickly pushed to a back burner by Justify’s Triple Crown-winning Belmont Stakes about an hour later. For a horse that took forever to come right, Spring Quality came a long way in a very short time. Spring Quality never had even raced on turf until Motion gave him his graded stakes debut last Oct. 9 in the Knickerbocker at Belmont Park. Spring Quality finished fourth, beaten three lengths, and Motion saw a horse step up in class, change racing surface, and run competitively despite a wide, tricky trip.

That was good handicapping. Spring Quality came right back to win the Grade 3 Red Smith Handicap at Aqueduct. Again, Spring Quality went home to Strawbridge’s farm, this time by design, freshening for a breakout season.

“I joked with Mr. Strawbridge after Aqueduct, ‘We’ll give him a little break now, but don’t keep him too long,’ ” Motion said.

Spring Quality’s 6-year-old debut produced a close second in the Grade 3 Fort Marcy Stakes to the talented Chilean import Robert Bruce, who also races in the Arlington Million. The Fort Marcy was intended as much as anything as a Manhattan prep. What wasn’t intended was breaking from post 13 in the Manhattan, one of North America’s most important early-season turf race.

Edgar Prado was born four years before Strawbridge bought Fast Approach. That makes him pretty damn old for a jockey. Motion still has faith in Prado, and from a difficult draw in a seven-figure race, Prado worked out a lovely trip for Spring Quality, who followed a sharp far-turn move by Sadler’s Joy and swept past to victory in the final half-furlong.

“I probably should have run him on turf earlier, but what was so confusing with the horse is he ran so well on dirt, and being by Quality Road I didn’t want to say he was a grass horse right away,” Motion said.

Strawbridge and Motion go way back. Motion worked for trainer Jonathan Sheppard, who used to train many of Strawbridge’s horses both on the flat and over jumps. Sheppard and Strawbridge won two Breeders’ Cup races, the 2008 Filly and Mare Turf with Forever Together and the 2009 Filly and Mare Sprint with Informed Decision. Strawbridge won another Breeders’ Cup race, the 1994 Turf, with Tikkanen. Motion also worked with trainer Jonathan Pease, who trained Tikkanen, in France, and Strawbridge saw him there, too, visiting the European wing of his equine holdings. That branch still breathes plenty of life: Strawbridge has 10 broodmares boarded in England and a 3-year-old homebred filly stabled with Freddie Head named With You who is one of the most exciting horses in Europe. She won the Group 1 Prix Rothschild in her most recent start and is set to tackle the freakish Alpha Centauri in the Jacque Le Marois later this month.

There have been plenty of major winners overseas, but no major winners in Chicago for Strawbridge. “We haven’t had great fortune there, and this is a very competitive Million,” he said.

Motion was in the race just last year, and with a horse very much like Spring Quality. Ascend was a late-developing 5-year-old of 2017 when he shocked the Manhattan at 27-1, twice Spring Quality’s price. After the Manhattan it was on to Saratoga and the Bowling Green before the trip to Arlington, where Ascend finished a commendable fifth from a difficult post position, 11.

“I felt like I screwed up with Ascend, running him in the Bowling Green,” Motion said. “This horse, after winning the Manhattan, I didn’t want to run in the next race that came up. I wanted to point him to the Million.”

So, late Saturday afternoon, Motion will give a leg up – up very high – to the 51-year-old jockey riding for the 80-year-old owner, all three men with decades in the sport. It has not been that long for Spring Quality – but it has been long enough.