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Essential Quality’s Ezum E-Z As You Please at Colonial

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A speed-and-fade ninth at longshot odds on seven-furlong debut at Gulfstream Park on Feb. 7, Shadwell Stable’s EZUM (c, 3, Essential Quality–Bashful Bertie, by Quiet American) was pounded into even-money favoritism stretching out to a mile Saturday at Colonial Downs and treated his rivals to a near 20-length beating.

Soon in front for Flavien Prat, the $485,000 Keeneland November weanling angled down towards the inside and made the running one off the fence while doing it through comfortable fractions up front. Prat held his mount together into the final three furlongs and when he edged ever so slightly forward in the irons, Ezum quickly began to build an imposing lead.

Never under anything but hand urging in the long Colonial stretch, the gray colt nevertheless covered his final quarter-mile in an unconscious :23.25 and put the better part of four seconds on his overmatched rivals. The final time of 1:34.23 establishes a new track record over a surface that has been putting up quick times over the last couple of days.

Sales history: $485,000 Wlg ’24 KEENOV. Lifetime Record: 2-1-0-0. O-Shadwell Stable; B-Nancy C Shuford (KY); T-Brad Cox

4th-Colonial Downs, $81,150, Msw, 3-14, 3yo, 1m, 1:34.23 (NTR), ft, 19 1/2 lengths.
EZUM (c, 3, Essential Quality–Bashful Bertie, by Quiet American) half to Beach Patrol (Lemon Drop Kid), MGISW, $2,532,945. Sales history: $485,000 Wlg ’23 KEENOV. Lifetime Record: 2-1-0-0, $45,680. Click for the Equibase.com chart or VIDEO, sponsored by FanDuel TV.
O-Shadwell Stable; B-Nancy C Shuford (KY); T-Brad H Cox.

EZUM “Mighta won by 2️⃣0️⃣!” – @TravisStone
Shadwell Stables’ EZUM ($4.00) breaks his maiden along with the track record at @ColonialDowns under jockey Flavien Prat for trainer @bradcoxracing. Another winner by @DarleyAmerica‘s Essential Quality. pic.twitter.com/FDrUIEn2Uc

— FanDuel Racing (@FanDuel_Racing) March 14, 2026

The post Essential Quality’s Ezum E-Z As You Please at Colonial appeared first on TDN | Thoroughbred Daily News | Horse Racing News, Results and Video | Thoroughbred Breeding and Auctions.

Barocio In Search Of Hollywood Ending With Lovesick Blues

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Strawberries and cream. Chocolate and peanut butter. Horse racing and making movies?

One of those is clearly not like the others, but Librado Barocio has managed to meld the two into a successful career, both behind the camera and, courtesy of the 8-year-old gelding Lovesick Blues (Grazen), more recently in front of the camera.

That’s because he’s been fielding numerous questions and granting frequent interviews about the horse that not only provided him with a maiden win at the Grade I level in the summer of 2025, but has also taken him and his team on the ride of a lifetime, first to Riyadh and now to Dubai, where Lovesick Blues will try to leave his mark on the G1 Dubai Golden Shaheen at Meydan Racecourse on Mar. 28.

“For me, it’s a blessing from God above. And it’s a dream come true,” Barocio said. “The good Lord, he brought Lovesick into my life and he just opened the doors for me to see the world. I know in my life I would never have ventured to the Middle East for anything, but it’s beautiful. It’s eye opening, beautiful. I’m just very fortunate to be in the position I am in.”

Having grown up in the Bay Area of Northern California, Barocio attended college at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA), where he played football. But the gridiron was never likely to offer more than near-term fulfillment.

“In the evening, we were going to an acting class there,” Barocio explained. “So that was what my goal was and I did some acting stuff, but then I got into the UCLA film school, learned the art of film-making. I was a film-maker and then horses. I did some acting stuff, but then I got into the UCLA film school, learned the art of film-making.”

And, known as Lee Librado (‘an agent said it was much easier for people to pronounce’), he found some success in that line of work.

“I just said to myself, “You know what? I’m not going to depend on anyone else to hire me,” Barocio explained. ‘I’m just going to make my own movies.’ So I was able to raise some financing and we made a string of movies that did well and then that’s kind of like what catapulted me there. ”

It was more than a little fortuitous that Barocio, whose heritage is part-Mexican and part-Italian, found his way into the horse racing business. His cousin’s fiance was an ex-jockey turned trainer, who talked Barocio into taking a piece of a horse. Owning and racing horses helped recreate some of the adrenaline he felt as a collegiate athlete.

“He said, ‘Hey, I’m training horses, you should come and check it out.’ So I went, because the film business is up and down and most of it’s down. There’s a lot of highs and lows. And during one of those lows, I happened to go there and he talked to me to buying a horse with him.

“We ran the horse and when that horse was coming down the stretch, that was the first time I ever felt like that was me back on the football field,” he said. “And I just kind of hit me like, ‘Whoa!’ That excitement, that feeling of living vicariously through that horse.”

A licensed trainer since 1999, Barocio had never got his hand on that ‘big horse’ and when he acquired Lovesick Blues from breeder Nick Alexander after finishing down the field in a minor race in the summer of 2024, it seemed the roughest of rough chances that the gray gelding would scale those sorts of heights.

But that he has. In eight starts for Barocio, Lovesick Blues has two wins, two seconds and a third, all in stakes competition and capped by an 18-1 boilover in the Bing Crosby Stakes at Del Mar, his first elite-level success. He was forced to come from a mile back, but ran with credit behind likely Golden Shaheen favorite Bentornato (Valiant Minister) in the GI Breeders’ Cup Sprint (sixth) and last time to Imagination (Good Magic) in the G2 Riyadh Dirt Sprint on Feb. 14 (fifth).

Barocio said that Lovesick Blues, recently named 2025 California-bred Horse of the Year, was due to work Saturday morning at Meydan.

“I’m probably going to probably breeze him out of the gate because I’m trying to get some more early speed into him, just to get him more on the bit. I’m making some tweaks,” Barocio said.

Reached via text Saturday evening Dubai time, the conditioner reported that Lovesick Blues went a half-mile from the starting stalls in :48 1/5.

“I love the way he did it and my rider says he is doing better than ever.”

If Barocio can work a little magic over the course of the next couple of weeks, it could, indeed, be an ending befitting a Hollywood screenplay.

“I’ve kind of played for nothing and won some major stakes in Southern California,” he said. “You got to make your future. You got to make it happen. Otherwise, no one’s going to hand it to you.”

So the stage is set. And Librado (or Lee, if you will) Barocio and Lovesick Blues are more than ready to be one of the star turns of Dubai World Cup night.

Who loves a grey?!

US G1 winner LOVESICK BLUES cantering at Meydan for trainer @LibradoBarocioS pic.twitter.com/l7BIasXrWS

— Dubai Racing Club (@RacingDubai) March 5, 2026

The post Barocio In Search Of Hollywood Ending With Lovesick Blues appeared first on TDN | Thoroughbred Daily News | Horse Racing News, Results and Video | Thoroughbred Breeding and Auctions.

Essential Quality’s Ezum E-Z As You Please at Colonial

---

A speed-and-fade ninth at longshot odds on seven-furlong debut at Gulfstream Park on Feb. 7, Shadwell Stable’s EZUM (c, 3, Essential Quality–Bashful Bertie, by Quiet American) was pounded into even-money favoritism stretching out to a mile Saturday at Colonial Downs and treated his rivals to a near 20-length beating.

Soon in front for Flavien Prat, the $485,000 Keeneland November weanling angled down towards the inside and made the running one off the fence while doing it through comfortable fractions up front. Prat held his mount together into the final three furlongs and when he edged ever so slightly forward in the irons, Ezum quickly began to build an imposing lead.

Never under anything but hand urging in the long Colonial stretch, the gray colt nevertheless covered his final quarter-mile in an unconscious :23.25 and put the better part of four seconds on his overmatched rivals. The final time of 1:34.23 establishes a new track record over a surface that has been putting up quick times over the last couple of days.

Sales history: $485,000 Wlg ’24 KEENOV. Lifetime Record: 2-1-0-0. O-Shadwell Stable; B-Nancy C Shuford (KY); T-Brad Cox

4th-Colonial Downs, $81,150, Msw, 3-14, 3yo, 1m, 1:34.23 (NTR), ft, 19 1/2 lengths.
EZUM (c, 3, Essential Quality–Bashful Bertie, by Quiet American) half to Beach Patrol (Lemon Drop Kid), MGISW, $2,532,945. Sales history: $485,000 Wlg ’23 KEENOV. Lifetime Record: 2-1-0-0, $45,680. Click for the Equibase.com chart or VIDEO, sponsored by FanDuel TV.
O-Shadwell Stable; B-Nancy C Shuford (KY); T-Brad H Cox.

EZUM “Mighta won by 2️⃣0️⃣!” – @TravisStone
Shadwell Stables’ EZUM ($4.00) breaks his maiden along with the track record at @ColonialDowns under jockey Flavien Prat for trainer @bradcoxracing. Another winner by @DarleyAmerica‘s Essential Quality. pic.twitter.com/FDrUIEn2Uc

— FanDuel Racing (@FanDuel_Racing) March 14, 2026

The post Essential Quality’s Ezum E-Z As You Please at Colonial appeared first on TDN | Thoroughbred Daily News | Horse Racing News, Results and Video | Thoroughbred Breeding and Auctions.

Barocio In Search Of Hollywood Ending With Lovesick Blues

---

Strawberries and cream. Chocolate and peanut butter. Horse racing and making movies?

One of those is clearly not like the others, but Librado Barocio has managed to meld the two into a successful career, both behind the camera and, courtesy of the 8-year-old gelding Lovesick Blues (Grazen), more recently in front of the camera.

That’s because he’s been fielding numerous questions and granting frequent interviews about the horse that not only provided him with a maiden win at the Grade I level in the summer of 2025, but has also taken him and his team on the ride of a lifetime, first to Riyadh and now to Dubai, where Lovesick Blues will try to leave his mark on the G1 Dubai Golden Shaheen at Meydan Racecourse on Mar. 28.

“For me, it’s a blessing from God above. And it’s a dream come true,” Barocio said. “The good Lord, he brought Lovesick into my life and he just opened the doors for me to see the world. I know in my life I would never have ventured to the Middle East for anything, but it’s beautiful. It’s eye opening, beautiful. I’m just very fortunate to be in the position I am in.”

Having grown up in the Bay Area of Northern California, Barocio attended college at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA), where he played football. But the gridiron was never likely to offer more than near-term fulfillment.

“In the evening, we were going to an acting class there,” Barocio explained. “So that was what my goal was and I did some acting stuff, but then I got into the UCLA film school, learned the art of film-making. I was a film-maker and then horses. I did some acting stuff, but then I got into the UCLA film school, learned the art of film-making.”

And, known as Lee Librado (‘an agent said it was much easier for people to pronounce’), he found some success in that line of work.

“I just said to myself, “You know what? I’m not going to depend on anyone else to hire me,” Barocio explained. ‘I’m just going to make my own movies.’ So I was able to raise some financing and we made a string of movies that did well and then that’s kind of like what catapulted me there. ”

It was more than a little fortuitous that Barocio, whose heritage is part-Mexican and part-Italian, found his way into the horse racing business. His cousin’s fiance was an ex-jockey turned trainer, who talked Barocio into taking a piece of a horse. Owning and racing horses helped recreate some of the adrenaline he felt as a collegiate athlete.

“He said, ‘Hey, I’m training horses, you should come and check it out.’ So I went, because the film business is up and down and most of it’s down. There’s a lot of highs and lows. And during one of those lows, I happened to go there and he talked to me to buying a horse with him.

“We ran the horse and when that horse was coming down the stretch, that was the first time I ever felt like that was me back on the football field,” he said. “And I just kind of hit me like, ‘Whoa!’ That excitement, that feeling of living vicariously through that horse.”

A licensed trainer since 1999, Barocio had never got his hand on that ‘big horse’ and when he acquired Lovesick Blues from breeder Nick Alexander after finishing down the field in a minor race in the summer of 2024, it seemed the roughest of rough chances that the gray gelding would scale those sorts of heights.

But that he has. In eight starts for Barocio, Lovesick Blues has two wins, two seconds and a third, all in stakes competition and capped by an 18-1 boilover in the Bing Crosby Stakes at Del Mar, his first elite-level success. He was forced to come from a mile back, but ran with credit behind likely Golden Shaheen favorite Bentornato (Valiant Minister) in the GI Breeders’ Cup Sprint (sixth) and last time to Imagination (Good Magic) in the G2 Riyadh Dirt Sprint on Feb. 14 (fifth).

Barocio said that Lovesick Blues, recently named 2025 California-bred Horse of the Year, was due to work Saturday morning at Meydan.

“I’m probably going to probably breeze him out of the gate because I’m trying to get some more early speed into him, just to get him more on the bit. I’m making some tweaks,” Barocio said.

Reached via text Saturday evening Dubai time, the conditioner reported that Lovesick Blues went a half-mile from the starting stalls in :48 1/5.

“I love the way he did it and my rider says he is doing better than ever.”

If Barocio can work a little magic over the course of the next couple of weeks, it could, indeed, be an ending befitting a Hollywood screenplay.

“I’ve kind of played for nothing and won some major stakes in Southern California,” he said. “You got to make your future. You got to make it happen. Otherwise, no one’s going to hand it to you.”

So the stage is set. And Librado (or Lee, if you will) Barocio and Lovesick Blues are more than ready to be one of the star turns of Dubai World Cup night.

Who loves a grey?!

US G1 winner LOVESICK BLUES cantering at Meydan for trainer @LibradoBarocioS pic.twitter.com/l7BIasXrWS

— Dubai Racing Club (@RacingDubai) March 5, 2026

The post Barocio In Search Of Hollywood Ending With Lovesick Blues appeared first on TDN | Thoroughbred Daily News | Horse Racing News, Results and Video | Thoroughbred Breeding and Auctions.