Essential Quality (Tapit–Delightful Quality, by Elusive Quality), last year's champion 2-year-old and winner of this year's GI Belmont S. and GI Runhappy Travers S., will begin his stud career next year at a fee of $75,000, Darley in America announced Sunday. Essential Quality concluded his racing career with a third-place effort in Saturday's GI Longines Breeders' Cup Classic.
“His body of work is just tremendous: an Eclipse champion at two, a Classic winner at three, a son of Tapit with a fantastic female family,” said Darley Sales Manager Darren Fox. “He's already generated quite a lot of interest and we couldn't be more excited about him retiring to Jonabell Farm.”
Essential Quality won eight of 10 starts, including last year's GI TVG Breeders' Cup Juvenile and GI Claiborne Breeders' Futurity, as well as this year's GII Jim Dandy S. and GII Toyota Blue Grass S. He retires with earnings of $4,755,144.
Also retiring to Jonabell in 2022 is Grade I winner Maxfield (Street Sense–Velvety, by Bernardini), who will stand for $40,000. The 4-year-old is expected to make his final career start in the Nov. 26 GI Clark H. at Churchill Downs.
Winner of the 2019 GI Claiborne Breeders' Futurity, Maxfield has won this year's GII Alysheba S. and GII Stephen Foster S. and is coming off runner-up efforts in the GI Whitney S. and GI Woodward S.
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