All Equine All The Time

Uncle Mo's Nyquist With 18 days until the Kentucky Derby, the field is mostly set with 27 horses currently on the Road to the Kentucky Derby leader board Churchill Downs sent out on Monday vying to get into the field. A maximum of 20 horses will enter the gate for the 2016 Kentucky Derby on May 7, with those runners representing a variety of sires and broodmare sires. Let’s take a look at some common themes seen on the pedigrees of those 27 looking to get in the Kentucky Derby. The story of the Kentucky Derby may come down to Uncle Mo (Indian Charlie) having four horses in the main body in his first crop of 3-year-olds to hit the track. With the defection of Tapit’s Cupid on Monday, Uncle Mo’s Mo Tom moved into the 20 th spot and the second Uncle Mo on the also eligible list – Laoban – is now 23 rd on the list. If all three horses currently in the field run, Uncle Mo will make history (along with Tapit) as the first sire since Equibase put charts online in 1991 t...

The late Scat Daddy was represented by a $535,000 filly. With over 300 2-year-olds finding new homes at the two-day Ocala Breeders’Co March Sale of 2-year-olds in training, there was much to take in at the second major 2-year-old sale of the season.  While not as many horses caused the $1-million mark fireworks seen at Fasig-Tipton’s Florida Sale , there was still enough to keep buyers entertained throughout the sale. Here are a few observations from the sale on stallions, buyers, and fairy tale purchases. Farewell to Smart Strike – Buyers still have a few more years before they are faced with trying to purchase horses from the final Smart Strike (Mr. Prospector) crop but his farewell tour was well underway at OBS March. His only yearling to sell at Fasig-Tipton Florida earlier this month sold for $200,000 but he bested that by more than $1-million with a colt out of Grade 2-placed Glamorista selling for $1.7-million to top the sale. Overall, the former leading ...

Candy Ride Tuesday marks the start of the second major 2-year-old sale of the year and with 521 2-year-olds slated to go through the ring at OBS's March Sale as of Sunday morning, buyers have a variety of horses to choose from. While buyers have long been doing their homework for this sale, they got their first glimpse of the potential the horses show on the track last week when the 2-year-olds put in their only public breeze before going through the ring at the breeze show.  With bullets of :9.3 for a furlong and :20.2 over a quarter mile, the 2-year-olds were motoring over the synthetic surface at OBS with 48 horses working under 10 seconds during the three-day preview last week. While buyers can always expect stallions like Tapit (Pulpit), Scat Daddy (Johannesburg), Uncle Mo (Indian Charlie) and War Front (Danzig) to be popular, the breeze show highlighted a few others that may be worth a second look before they enter the ring over the next few days.  Here are eigh...

Paddy O'Prado As the racing season starts to ramp up, eyes are turning to last year’s First-Crop sires to see if their runners can continue on as 3-year-olds. There are over 300 stallions listed on Blood-Horse as having their first 3-year-olds this year but here are six in North America that the racing industry should have an eye on in 2016. While Uncle Mo (Indian Charlie) set records in 2015 as the leading First-Crop sire and has the most 3-year-olds nominated to the Triple Crown of any sire, there are skeptics about how his 3-year-olds will train on this year. While the doubts make sense as a number of good first year sires haven’t had a lot of success in subsequent years and Uncle Mo wasn’t as brilliant as a 3-year-old as he was at 2, I personally don’t see any reason why his horses won’t step up this year. While not as brilliant as he was at 2 Uncle Mo himself was a good 3-year-old, even with his illness knocking him out for a decent chunk of the year, winning the Gra...