Later that spring, he finished third in the $571,647 Indian Nations Futurity Cup at Santa Fe and third in the $200,000 Grade III Kentucky Jockey Club Stakes at Churchill Downs, losing to Cape Town.

[2] Although still lightly regarded in a year with many quality three-year-olds competing, in 1998 Real Quiet was ridden to victory by jockey Kent Desormeaux in the Kentucky Derby.

In the $600,000 Special, he was the second choice to Free House, who had won both of his Grade I starts coming into the race that year including the Santa Anita Handicap.

They dueled down the home-stretch, with Gary Stevens driving Real Quiet forward and Chris McCarron trying to hold his thin lead aboard Free House.

Real Quiet ran the mile and three-sixteenths in 1:54 1/5, returned $5.80 for a $2 bet to win, and added $360,000 to a bankroll that passed $2.6 million.

That summer, Real Quiet won the $1 million Grade I Hollywood Gold Cup, defeating Budroyale and Malek over ten furlongs in 1:59.67.

George Hofmeister's Highland Farm had purchased the breeding rights to the horse the month before the Kentucky Derby.

Real Quiet later stood at Taylor Made Stallions in Kentucky and Pin Oak Lane Farm, then Penn Ridge, both in Pennsylvania.

Although Real Quiet's progeny have not been nearly as successful in the United States, he produced Pussycat Doll, who won the La Brea Stakes and the G1 Humana Distaff Handicap (defeating her stablemate Behaving Badly); No Place Like It, winner of the U.S.A Pine Oak Stakes; and Wonder Lady Ann L, winner of the 2006 Coaching Club American Oaks (G1) at Belmont Park.

Real Quiet died on September 27, 2010, from an injury he suffered after falling in his paddock at Penn Ridge Farms.