Photo Essay: Kentucky Derby Favorite Essential Quality

Apr 30, 2021 Jamie Newell/TwinSpires.com

Essential Quality has not been hard to find the past couple of years… until now. The Brad Cox trainee broke his maiden here at Churchill Downs on Sept. 5, 2020; that’s right, pandemic Derby Day. He went off as the favorite, and he’s been the favorite or nearly so in every race he’s run in since. From the beginning, he’s had the pedigree, the looks, and the connections. By sire of sires Tapit, Essential Quality stands to be the illustrious stallion’s first Kentucky Derby winner, an elusive goal on the near-white sire’s list of champion progeny.

Following a four-length win on debut, Essential Quality went straight into the highest caliber of stakes competition, the Breeders' Futurity S. (G1) at Keeneland. He passed that test, too, and won that race by just over three lengths. His greatest challenge came at the same track a month later in the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile (G1), the big dance for two-year-olds in horse racing’s world championships. Again, he turned back the competition, gunning down the leaders on the wire, in a blast of orange Kentucky sunset.

So often, two-year-olds don’t go on to best their juvenile accomplishments. As for EQ, he hit the road to Arkansas and made his first start of the year in the Southwest S. (G3) at Oaklawn Park, and sailed home in the slop to win by more than four. He made a triumphant return to Kentucky afterward, in the Blue Grass S. (G2) at Keeneland, the state’s traditional last major prep race for the Kentucky Derby. 

In the Blue Grass, Essential Quality looked like he might lose for the first time, as runner-up Highly Motivated fought back when the champ came to challenge. It prompts the question, is Essential Quality losing his luster, or was he not fully cranked up, leaving plenty to spare for what will ultimately be the biggest race of his life on the first Saturday in May?

This past week, Essential Quality has been the first Derby contender out on the track, in the dark, at some ungodly hour before the rooster crows. Traditionally, the Derby and Oaks contenders have a reserved time slot of 7:30 a.m. where they can have the whole track to themselves; this gives them the freedom to do their morning exercise without the hazards of two-year-olds or other errant horses getting in the way, and ensures fans and media can see the contenders after sunrise. Only once did EQ go out with his fellow Derby contenders—next to a pony, chaperoned—not exactly giving the public a breathless view. 

On Thursday morning, I received a tip Essential Quality would be gate schooling at 7:30 a.m. Actually, I’d received it Wednesday night, but I’d gone to bed early, trying in vain to catch up on precious, precious sleep, feeling if he was going out at 5:15 a.m., good luck to those who wanted to photograph him in the dark in the expected heavy rain.

Newly energized at the idea of finally seeing the Derby favorite, I headed to the track, at the same time I’d been going previous days. There I was told I was no longer allowed to park my car in the same parking lot where I’d been parking every morning that week. This I was told with less time than was necessary to park on the opposite side of the grandstand, shuttle, get to my position, and see the big horse. In that moment, I decided I’d rather risk getting towed or a parking ticket than miss EQ, and abandoned my car at Wagner’s Pharmacy, said a little prayer to the racing gods, and hauled it to my spot with 20 pounds of camera equipment strapped across me like I was going into the trenches and may never return.

Expecting a deluge like last year, when I stalked Tiz the Law in blinding conditions, I swished to my spot in complete rain gear, but the sky held back, and the rain waited. Essential Quality was the first Derby horse on the track. He accompanied his pony chaperone to the starting gate first, passing a view of the twin spires and giving me a look as he went in, without fuss, into the gate. His stablemate Mandaloun came next, and the two settled into the gate, and practiced being unloaded from behind. Essential Quality squatted back on his haunches like a viper ready to strike. But they weren’t sent out, not yet. Both colts were unloaded from behind the gate, then allowed to canter a circuit around without their chaperones.

It was bath time after that, and under the soap suds, Essential Quality’s coat gleamed like chiseled granite. Every bit of him a honed athlete made for this event, bred and babied for this task of achieving immortality. He posed kindly for photos, and when the royal blue Godolphin sheet was thrown over him, he truly looked the part of the champion ready to ascend to the next stage in his illustrious career. Is Essential Quality special? Most definitely. 

Is he the Derby winner? Only the racing gods can answer that. It was them I thanked when the rain never touched us, and I found my car in the same spot I’d left it, without a ticket. Sometimes, the stars align.