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Godolphin back on the Derby trail
Godolphin is on the 2021 Kentucky Derby trail with its Eclipse Award champion two-year-old Essential Quality. Darley America’s president Jimmy Bell looks back at 2020 and forward to 2021 with Melissa Bauer-Herzog
JUST LIKE MANY IN THE WORLD, Godolphin’s American branch had a roller-coaster in 2020. The operation started the year with a 2020 Kentucky Derby favourite, but suffered disappointment when that favourite was hurt in June and was forced to miss the rescheduled Kentucky Derby.
But the new year has started positively for Godolphin winning two Eclipse Awards and getting back on the Kentucky Derby trail with another early favourite, Essential Quality.
Among those triumphs and disappointments, Godolphin also saw its stable of runners place in the top three in 45 stakes races with 17 stakes victories to take home Eclipse champion owner honours.
That victory was made even sweeter when its homebred Essential Quality was named Eclipse champion two-year-old, a year after Maxfield missed out on the award after scratching from the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile days before the race.
“I think it just goes to show how difficult the game is,” said Jimmy Bell, Darley America’s president. “A week before the Breeders’ Cup in Maxfield’s year we couldn’t wait for the opportunity, we thought that was going to be his real showcase.
The champion two-year-old title was icing on the cake for the team, but Bell was proud of that the champion owners’ title was acheived with victories from right around the country. Godolphin won stakes races at 11 tracks across seven states stretching from New York to California and everywhere in between, and was headlined by three Grade 1 successes.
“It was spread out all across the country and that’s something we’ve been happy to do, have these horses in different areas, which was very nice to see,” said Bell.
“We had some really powerful performances. Fair Maiden had been a little unlucky in a couple of her races and finally got her opportunity and seized it [in the La Brea (G1)] – she and Essential Quality are two really special Grade 1-winning horses.
“Then we had a lot of good races in between, a lot of other individuals who stepped up and really made for a pretty full body of work for the year. That was pretty special.”
Maxfield: the talented son of Street Sense missed the Derby, but won at the end of the year and is back in training for 2021
While it’d be easy for the team to sit back and enjoy 2020’s successes, it is already full steam ahead with this year’s Kentucky Derby trail in mind.
Essential Quality has come back well from his break and is targeting (at the time of writing) a mid-February Kentucky Derby prep, though it isn’t fully decided where he’ll go. The colt showed last year that he can win from nearly any position, and this adds to Bell’s excitement about his three-year-old season.
“I think the key from Essential Quality’s three races is just versatility – that’s a big characteristic to have in his arsenal if he is not dependent on race shape or pace or anything,” he explains. “He’s kind of shown in his races that, through his two-year-old year, he really was the complete package.”
That colt is just one of three potential contenders for Triple Crown races for Godolphin, and perhaps the one flying a little under-the-radar is the Lecomte Stakes (G3) runner-up Proxy.
He has never finished worse than second in his four career starts, and trainer Michael Stidham has reported that the son of Tapit would get better as he got older and the distances got longer – something that has shown to be true.
“He’s not far from having a nearly undefeated record. He got beat a neck in his first start, won his next two and then stepped up in the Lecomte and was a very good second,” notes Bell.
“I thought he showed a lot of tenacity and gameness when he battled the heavy favourite in the Lecomte to be second, they were both closing in on the leader. He’s a sneaky colt who has done nothing but gotten better in every race, even though every race has gotten a little more competitive and difficult. I think he is slated for the Risen Star [February 13].”
Less than a week before the Eclipse Awards, Prevalence had the social media drums banging with a big win on debut.
The colt had given indications at home that he’d be good and pre-race trainer Brendan Walsh was excited about his future.
Bell admitted no one expected that the colt would win by a widening eight and a half lengths in a hand ride in one of the toughest Maiden Special Weight races run at Gulfstream Park this season.
THE TEAM IS hoping to run in a mile Allowance race at Gulfstream next time, but Bell conceded the horse may have to step him up to tougher company than that.
“His win came in a pretty quick time and it was a pretty quick race overall, so we’ll kind of play that from ear on where we go – but no question that was a ‘wow’ performance,” he says.
“I think with him, you’re going to want to find out sooner rather than later what his best distance will be, or if there is a distance limitation.
“He is by Medaglia D’Oro out of a Ghostzapper mare. There’s a lot of speed in the family, but some of these good ones just have the mechanics of going very fast, very far and can carry that distance, so the trip remains to be seen.
“In a perfect world we’d like to come back in a nice Allowance race going a mile and one sixteenth, but I’m not too sure those races are going to show up so we’re probably going to have to dip our toe in the water, like it or not.”
One point of pride for Godolphin is that all three colts – and all its stakes winners last year as well – are homebreds. All but three of those winners from last year are by a Darley stallion, out of a daughter of a Darley stallion daughter or both, bringing the programme full circle.
“I think it’s a reflection top to bottom to Sheikh Mohammed,” says Bell of the pedigrees. “I think that he takes great pride in the stallion roster that he has put together and we obviously support our stallions quite a bit and we’re seeing that beginning to come through in so many ways.
“To see Prevalence by Medaglia D’Oro, and Maxfield by Street Sense, and you’ve got Bernardini there as a broodmare sire as well. It really begins to show the impact, the longevity and the influence that Sheikh Mohammed has had on the breed.”
It isn’t only the Godolphin runners the Darley stallions have influenced – in late January four of the stallions had threeyear-olds in the top 20 on the Road to the Kentucky Derby leaderboard.
Even more notable for the stallion roster is that two young sires, Nyquist and Frosted, both have horses from their first crop as likely contenders for the Kentucky Derby and Kentucky Oaks.
Nyquist: big year ahead
YET ANOTHER FEATHER in the Darley cap is that champion freshman sire Nyquist is also the sire of last year’s champion two-year-old filly Vequist. Nyquist is following in the footsteps of his own champion freshman sire Uncle Mo.
“The two stallions having Derby and Oaks contenders is everything because it’s such a competitive area, the stallion market,” explains Bell.
“It is imperative for your longevity because the industry wants something right now, right now, right now!
“Everyone wants to see that two-year-old form, those two-year-old winners, to see a horse who looks like it wants to go two turns.
“Oh, by the way we’d love to see something on the Oaks board and Derby trail, too!
“So these young stallions are delivering in the most difficult way to deliver – having winners at the top level. That’s where a lot of focus is, a lot of coverage is, and when you look up and see those things they do stand out.”
Bell credits both the Darley America nominations team and the breeders for helping the roster make such a big impact on the Kentucky Derby trail.
He also said they’ve tried to keep the stallions at the right price point for success, both commercially and on the track.
“It’s very tough, we all know how hard it is to get any kind of commercially successful sire, but we’ve got a lot of stallions at the right price points and they are well supported,” says Bell of the roster. “I think our nominations team does a fantastic job relationship-wise, they have a lot of back and forth and conferences with breeders, and we have breeders on our team as well.
“All these things go in to having the success. It’s not quite 1 + 1, there are a lot of additional factors, but certainly having great support both internally and externally makes a difference.”
Seeing one of their stallions sire a Kentucky Derby winner would be satisfying, but the ultimate goal is to add a Kentucky Derby victory to the Godolphin resume.
As Bell points out Sheikh Mohammed’s worldwide operation has won nearly every other big race so to add a Kentucky Derby victory would be significant.
“We’ll be patient and see what does and what doesn’t unfold as we’re all well aware things change quickly, but they can change for the good as well,” he reflects.
“We want to continue on the path we’re on, and the good news is we’ve got some very nice newly turned three-year-olds, who are all looking ass though they want to compete at the highest level around two turns, the more of the Classic type of breeding that Sheikh Mohammed enjoys. We’ll just kind of see how things unfold.
Nyquist: the 2020 champion freshman sire’s leading daughter Vequist is targeting the Kentucky Oaks
“In January, it’s nice to be having this conversation but it’s a long way [until the Derby] in reality.”
The focus in the US over the next several months will be on the Triple Crown but for Godolphin and Darley, that’s just one piece of the puzzle they’ll be putting together as they try to go for their second straight Eclipse Award.
The 2020 Kentucky Derby favourite Maxfield is back on the track and has already shown he’ll be an interesting horse for the older horse division, alongside Godolphin’s 2020 Jim Dandy Stakes (G2) winner Mystic Guide, while Fair Maiden looks to be one of the top older female contenders.
As long as all goes to plan – something always difficult to predict in horseracing – it should be another Eclipse-worthy year for the Darley America all around the country.
