One of the unsung heroes of the leading international stallion band this year could well be Breeders’ Cup Juvenile winner of 2010 Uncle Mo.
Not only has the former US champion 2yo supplied a constant barrage of stakes winners in 2020, but Uncle Mo sire sons are shaping up with huge promise, and Uncle Mo looks poised to become a stallion of considerable worth, both as a sire of stakes winners, and as a potentially potent sire of sires.
A son of Santa Anita Derby winner Indian Charlie, Uncle Mo again hit the headlines this Saturday when his G1 Hollywood Derby winning son Mo Forza captured the G2 City Of Hope Mile at Santa Anita Park this weekend.
Now a five time graded stakes winner, Mo Forza is one of 19 stakes winners (and one of 13 graded stakes winners for his sire this year, with Uncle Mo’s other graded winners in 2020 including Thursday’s unbeaten G3 Chick Lang Stakes winner Yaupon and recent G2 Zenyatta Stakes heroine Harvest Moon.
Uncle Mo’s young sire sons are also shaping up with great promise this year. His Kentucky Derby winning son Nyquist has already produced a pair of G1 winners from his early, first two-year-olds this year, with his daughter Vequist landing the G1 Spinaway Stakes and Gretzky The Great landing the G1 Summer Stakes at Woodbine. Both Vequist and Gretzky The Great look potential Breeders’ Cup contenders, and a Breeders’ Cup win would further enhance Nyquist’s potential as a stallion.
Nyquist
Nyquist, who emulated his sire by landing the G1 Breeders’ Cup Juvenile, is not the only son of Uncle Mo to have come up with a G1 winner in his first crop in 2020, however.
Uncle Mo’s G2 Jim Dandy Stakes winning son Laoban (whose broodmare sire Speightstown has had a magnificent year in 2020) made headlines when his first-crop daughter Simply Ravishing won the G1 Darley Alcibiades Stakes at Keeneland on Friday to become her sire’s first top-level winner.
Now unbeaten in three starts, Simply Ravishing had become her sire’s first stakes winner when she won the P.G. Johnson Stakes
Laoban went close to coming up with a second G1 winner from his first crop when his son Keepmeinmind ran second in Saturday’s G1 Breeders Futurity at Keeneland.
Uncle Mo is currently responsible for three of the top five sires (Nyquist, Laoban, Outwork) on North America’s Leading 1st-Crop Sires List, with another son, Uncle Lino, currently the second leading first crop sire in Maryland.
