Essential Quality's First Foals Look the Part

Watch Essential Quality's First Foals Look the Part - thoroughbreddailynews on Dailymotion

Transcript

00:00The first foals by champion Essential Quality have arrived, so we stopped by

00:10John Abel Farm to visit the four-type grade one winner and meet one of his

00:14first foals. So Essential Quality, we're really excited to see his first foals

00:19being born. He bred a tremendous first book. I think nine grade one winners and

00:27ten dams of grade one winners. So we have some really fancy mares that are

00:32bullying their Essential Qualities right now. And overall he's getting just tons

00:37of leg. I mean a lot of hip. We've had two breeders so far have called to book

00:42their mare back to him. So that is a huge indicator and positive sign that people

00:49are really liking what they're seeing. We have a very exciting Essential Quality

00:54colt. I had to spin the bottle. Very, very strong colt. A lot of weight when he was

00:59born. 150 pounds. Really strong. A lot of bone. The best thing I really like about

01:03him is he has a two-term pedigree with a sprinter body. That always gets my

01:08attention. He just blew me away when I saw him. I was like, wow, we should have

01:12bred more mares to him. He's the kind of horse that, you know, everybody who comes

01:18to see him always kind of goes, wow, like he's really pretty. He's got a

01:22gorgeous shoulder. He's really well balanced and he is very correct. Nice

01:29walker. He has a great presence about him. From day one, he was a horse that was

01:35extremely special. Brad Cox, very early on, kind of identified him as a horse who

01:42looked like a Belmont Stakes winner. And he was a horse that he did very rare

01:49things on the racetrack. I mean, he's one of only seven horses in the history of

01:54the Eclipse Awards to have been named champion two-year-old and champion

01:58three-year-old. You know, he never missed an intended workout. He never missed an

02:03intended race. And these are the kind of things that just, you know, it doesn't

02:08happen at that level. He also retired completely sound. Race medication free.

02:14Never trained on Lasix. So he's a horse that we're confident his progeny will be

02:20extremely sound. And I think we have a lot to look forward to for that reason

02:24as well.

02:25One of the best things about Essential Quality is his female pedigree. He has a

02:28great race record, but his female pedigree is enormous. And that was one of

02:33the reasons why we were drawing the breed to him and by marriage and foal to

02:36him as well.

02:37The reason I think Essential Quality is really good value in year two is first

02:42of all, when you look at his body of work, he is still one of the best stallion

02:47prospects out there right now. Yes, he's second year, but when you're coming

02:52behind the kind of mares he bred in his first year, he, you know, had these

02:57remarkable grade one winners and grade one producers in his first book. And you

03:01also look at the fact that he was a champion two-year-old who was three for

03:06three at two. You have to look at it like you'll be selling a yearling maybe in

03:10September after his first two-year-olds have started running at the big summer

03:16races at Churchill and at Saratoga, hopefully pointing for championship

03:21races on the fall. So I think he's great value in year two. And we're excited

03:26because a lot of breeders that are coming back to him in year two. So we

03:31think he's great value.