Essential Quality wins Belmont Stakes as banned Baffert stays in background
Brad Cox picked up his first Triple Crown victory with Essential Quality’s romp to victory in the Belmont Stakes on Saturday while waiting to see if he’ll be awarded another from the Kentucky Derby.
Cox could be a Derby winner with Mandaloun if Bob Baffert-trained Medina Spirit is disqualified. But Cox was able to enjoy this one with Essential Quality beating Hot Rod Charlie by one-and-a-quarter lengths.
Essential Quality, who went off as the 6-5 favorite, passed early leader Hot Rod Charlie around the final turn and held on to win the $1m race.
“That was a long way around there a mile-a-half but it was exciting,” Cox said. “It looked like the horse on the inside, he still had run left. I knew it was going to be a battle down the lane.”
Bob Baffert banned in New York following Medina Spirit’s failed drugs test
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Preakness winner Rombauer was third and Known Agenda fourth.
Essential Quality, a striking gray colt, finished fourth as a beaten favorite in the Kentucky Derby because of a rough trip. Essential Quality showed in the Belmont why he has long been considered one of the top three-year-olds in the country.
“In the Kentucky Derby we were so confident that we’re gonna win that race,” said jockey Luis Saez, who won a Triple Crown race for the first time. “He was ready for the race. But we have a little unlucky start ... Today the main thing was try to break clean and the rest I know he’s gonna do it.”
Backdooring his way to becoming the first Louisville-born trainer to win the Kentucky Derby wouldn’t allow Cox the same joy of victory as the Belmont, which the up-and-coming star will likely remember as his first true Triple Crown triumph. And Cox saw this coming. He predicted last summer that Essential Quality would be his horse for the Belmont, and that proved true in beating a tough field of seven other horses.
The race was run without a horse trained by Baffert, who was banned by the New York Racing Association after Medina Spirit failed a post-Derby drug test for the presence of a steroid. Churchill Downs suspended Baffert for two years after a second sample from the Derby came back positive for betamethasone, which is prohibited at any level on race day in Kentucky, Maryland and New York.
Normalcy returned to the Belmont after a topsy-turvy 2020 that featured the race leading off the Triple Crown at an empty racetrack.