Essential Quality was set Tuesday as a 2-1 favorite for the Belmont Stakes, which will be run Saturday without a horse from trainer Bob Baffert pending an investigation into Medina Spirit's failed drug test after winning the Kentucky Derby. Preakness winner Rombauer and Essential Quality headline a field of eight horses for the third jewel of the Triple Crown. Baffert has no horses running at Belmont Park because the New York Racing Association suspended him in light of Medina Spirit's positive drug test for a corticosteroid at the Derby.
Michael McCarthy kept a gentle hold on Rombauer as they relaxed after a Sunday morning walk around the shedrow at Pimlico Race Course. The new Preakness champion demonstrated none of the fire that had propelled him past Medina Spirit and Midnight Bourbon the previous evening. “I think we might have taken a little starch out of him last night,” McCarthy said. The 50-year-old trainer, who’d just .