Progeny of Uncle Mo, once a Derby favorite, dot this year's field
Katie Lamb will be providing preview content for the Kentucky Derby, Preakness Stakes, and Belmont Stakes for theScore this season. Katie's horse-racing coverage has appeared in The New York Times and the Toronto Star.
Prominent New York businessman Mike Repole is coming to Churchill Downs hoping to settle some unfinished business.
Five years ago, Repole flew 95 of his closest friends and family to Louisville for the Kentucky Derby. One could hardly blame him. The founder of Vitaminwater had two horses in the race, including Uncle Mo, the favorite.
But that Friday morning, the day before the Derby, Repole stood in front of reporters to announce that his superstar colt would not race. After a sparkling 2-year-old season, in which Uncle Mo was crowned North America’s champion 2-year-old, the wheels began to fall off on the colt’s road to the Kentucky Derby.
After placing a disappointing third in the Wood Memorial, a major prep for the Derby, Uncle Mo’s health began to deteriorate, forcing his connections, which included top trainer Todd Pletcher, to scratch the colt.
Fast-forward to today and the name Uncle Mo is on everyone’s lips, only for another reason. Now a stallion, Uncle Mo has three sons in the Derby, a remarkable feat given his oldest babies are just 3 years old.
His first crop have hit the ground running.
"I can't remember this strong of a first crop from any stallion," Pletcher told the L.A. Times’ John Cherwa. "The whole marketplace has caught on to how much potential there is for him as a stallion. I don't ever recall going to sales and (having) so many people talking about such a young stallion."
Nyquist, owned by Windsor, Ontario-born J. Paul Reddam, is the favorite and a son of Uncle Mo. So is Mo Tom, a colt owned by GMB Racing, the stable of Tom and Gayle Benson. Tom also owns the New Orleans Saints. And then there’s Outwork, recent winner of the Wood Memorial, who's owned by Repole and trained by Pletcher.
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Uncle Mo is also represented on Friday in the Kentucky Oaks, the filly version of the Derby, with Mo D’Amour.
Upon retirement, Uncle Mo went to stand at stud at Ashford Stud in Lexington, Ky., the American outpost of Irish-based Coolmore, the most influential thoroughbred operation in the world. Uncle Mo’s stud fee, the price to mate a mare to him, is $75,000, but Reddam, the owner of Nyquist, thinks the price could rise to somewhere in the neighborhood of $125,000, because of his early success.
Uncle Mo is not the only stallion to have three horses represented in the Derby. Leading sire Tapit, who commands a cool $300,000 per breeding, also has three of his progeny in the big race: Mohaymen, Lani, and Creator. But Tapit has been at stud for a decade; his progeny did not reach this height in quite the same fashion.
So far, Uncle Mo’s babies have earned more than $8.5 million, headed by Nyquist who has banked $3.3 million in just seven starts. Like his dad, he was also awarded champion 2-year-old.
Repole himself owns more than a dozen Uncle Mo offspring, including Outwork, who he hopes will do what his father couldn’t do.
"I always knew Mo was a once-in-a-lifetime horse," Repole told The Associated Press.
"What I didn't expect five years ago was he would give me offspring that were brilliant also. I never thought Uncle Mo would be a better sire than he was a racehorse, but he's going to be."