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The 2020 Freshman Sire Yearbook: Sons Of Uncle Mo Carry On Fast-Starting Tradition

Every freshman sire class has its own story.

In 2019, the narrative centered around how an extremely deep class would stack up against the imposing first book of the first Triple Crown winner in decades, American Pharoah. The year before that, it was a battle of philosophies between Spendthrift Farm sires, with eventual victor Cross Traffic and his champion Jaywalk duking it out against Goldencents' broad army of runners.

The story of the 2020 freshman sire class will be remembered for a horse that debuted at stud nearly a decade ago: Uncle Mo.

After Uncle Mo's own initial crop of runners set records for freshman-sired earnings, his first sons from that crop have carried the momentum into the next generation with aplomb, and in different ways.

Nyquist, who brought home a classic, a Breeders' Cup win and an Eclipse Award for his sire, did it the conventional way, getting runners at the highest level, as he was expected to do. Laoban did it the unconventional way, getting enough graded stakes winners to merit being moved from New York to Kentucky. Outwork, Uncle Mo's very first starter and winner, did it with numbers, piling horses into starting gates and winner's circles.

Of course, sons of Uncle Mo weren't the only ones that had big debuts in 2020. Here is a look back at all the stallions who made a mark last year, and hopefully set themselves up for long careers at stud.

Highest Progeny Earnings, Most Grade 1 Winners, Highest-Earning Individual Runner: Nyquist
Uncle Mo x Seeking Gabrielle, by Forestry
Standing at Darley America
2021 Fee: $75,000
Progeny Earnings: $2,424,083
Leading Earner: Vequist – $1,235,500

Much like Uncle Mo, champion Nyquist got the job done in a big way with his debut crop of juveniles.

The Darley America resident hit just about every quality benchmark one would like to see with his first runners, chief among them being a Breeders' Cup score by Vequist in the Juvenile Fillies. That win gave Nyquist an insurmountable lead in the earnings race among freshman sires, and secured Vequist's spot as the highest-earning freshman-sired runner for 2020.

While Vequist's Breeders' Cup victory held the wheel for much her sire's cumulative success last year, it was anything but a fluke for the filly. She kicked off a giant September for Nyquist, who had the winner and third-place finisher in the G1 Spinaway Stakes at Saratoga, in Vequist and Lady Lilly, respectively. The month ended with Nyquist notching his class-leading second Grade 1 winner when Gretzky the Great took the G1 Summer Stakes at Woodbine, giving the sire wins at the highest level over both dirt and turf.

Nyquist's success at the top of these lists was more than enough to establish Uncle Mo's credentials as a current and future sire of sires, but that notion is driven home by the stallions that fill out the podium. In all three categories that Nyquist led by himself, fellow Uncle Mo stallion Laoban finished third or better. They are joined by Outwork, who had the second-highest-earning freshman-sired runner of 2020 in Grade 1-placed stakes winner Outadore.

Honorable Mentions (Progeny Earnings)
– Laoban (Sequel New York to WinStar Farm):
– Not This Time (Taylor Made Stallions):

Honorable Mentions (Grade 1 Winners)
– Laoban (Sequel New York to WinStar Farm): One G1 Winner
– Not This Time (Taylor Made Stallions): One G1 Winner

Honorable Mention (Highest-Earning Individual Runners)
– Outwork (WinStar Farm): Outadore – $430,100
– Laoban (Sequel New York to WinStar Farm): Simply Ravishing – $414,200

Most Winners, Most Progeny Wins: Not This Time
Giant's Causeway x Miss Macy Sue, by Trippi
Standing at Taylor Made Stallions
2021 Fee: $40,000
2020 Winners: 28
2020 Wins: 34

Not This Time made a big splash in the freshman sire pool when Princess Noor brought $1.35 million at last year's reconfigured Ocala Breeders' Sales Co. June 2-Year-Olds In Training Sale, and the filly's Grade 1-winning campaign helped propel her sire to the upper echelon of his class. However, it was the rank-and-file that truly gave the sire his foundation.

Despite being tied for the fourth-most starters among North America's freshman sires (he had 54, while leader Exaggerator had 69), Not This Time's 28 winners was nine more than next-closest Outwork and Upstart, each with 19. Similarly, the 34 wins his runners racked up last year was comfortably ahead of the tie for second between Nyquist and Upstart with 21.

Filling out the ranks below Princess Noor were stakes winners Dirty Dangle and Vacay, as well as Grade 3-placed Hopeful Princess and Time Goes On.

Honorable Mentions – Winners
– Outwork (WinStar Farm): 19 winners
– Upstart (Airdrie Stud): 19 winners

Honorable Mentions – Progeny Wins
– Nyquist (Darley America): 21 wins
– Upstart (Airdrie Stud): 21 wins

Most Graded Stakes Winners: Nyquist and Laoban

Nyquist
Uncle Mo x Seeking Gabrielle, by Forestry
Standing at Darley America
2021 Fee: $75,000
Graded Winners: Vequist and Gretzky the Great

Laoban
Uncle Mo x Chattertown, by Speightstown
Standing at WinStar Farm (formerly at Sequel New York)
2021 Fee: $25,000
Graded Winners: Simply Ravishing and Keepmeinmind

Again, Uncle Mo's hoofprints can be found all over the top of the freshman sire ranks.

We've already touched off on Nyquist's high-end achievements, spearheaded by Grade 1 winners Vequist and Gretzky the Great. Both horses could realistically end the year as champions in their respective divisions: Vequist with the Eclipse Award as champion 2-year-old female, and Gretzky the Great with the Sovereign Award as Canada's champion 2-year-old male.

Laoban earned his spot on the podium with Simply Ravishing, winner of the Grade 1 Alcibiades Stakes, and with Keepmeinmind in the G2 Kentucky Jockey Club Stakes.

Honorable Mentions (All With One Graded Stakes Winner):
– Not This Time (Taylor Made Stallions)
– Frosted (Darley America)
– Brody's Cause (Spendthrift Farm)
– Hit It a Bomb (Spendthrift Farm)

Value Play: Upstart
Flatter x Party Silks, by Touch Fold
Standing at Airdrie Stud
2021 Stud Fee: $10,000

Airdrie Stud traditionally hasn't let the allure of a first-crop stallion cloud its judgment when it comes to setting the stud fee for their inaugural season. That philosophy rewarded a lot of breeders with Upstart, who entered stud in 2017 with an advertised fee of $10,000.

That started in the sale ring, where Upstart's first yearlings averaged $61,898 in 2019. That's a healthy return on investment, but for those who like to swing for the fences, Upstart had 14 yearlings bring $100,000, led by a colt who brought $510,000 at the Fasig-Tipton Saratoga sale.

Upstart's 2-year-olds performed respectably as well. Even through the uncertainty of the 2020 juvenile auction calendar, his first juveniles averaged $104,400 from 25 sold, headed up by a $600,000 colt at the OBS March sale.

Upstart continued to reward his investors once his first foals hit the racetrack, tying for the second-most winners and wins in his class. Many young sires pick up bulk numbers like that by scattering maiden winners around the map, but Upstart made a splash on the highest level with multiple Grade 1-placed Reinvestment Risk, who competed in last year's Breeders' Cup Juvenile.

Elsewhere, the stallion was represented by Upstriker, who just missed Grade 1 black type when he finished fourth in the G1 Breeders' Futurity at Keeneland after a five-length first-out score at Ellis Park. Also in that race was fifth-place Founder, who won on debut in Saratoga.

From a relatively low entry price, Upstart has proven he can get a horse into the winner's circle just about anywhere. The stallion himself only got better as he got older, so that bodes well for his runners as they enter deeper water.

Regional Standout: Laoban
Uncle Mo x Chattertown, by Speightstown
Standing at WinStar Farm (formerly at Sequel New York)
2021 Fee: $25,000

There was only going to be one answer here. Laoban's rapid ascent to one of the top freshman sires in his class earned him a ticket south from Sequel New York to WinStar Farm for the upcoming breeding season.

The son of Uncle Mo's ability to move up his mares was apparent as early as last year's Saratoga meet, when Simply Ravishing won the P. G. Johnson Stakes and Ava's Grace finished third in the G2 Adirondack Stakes.

Laoban's unforgettable fall season was highlighted by a showcase weekend at Keeneland, in which Simply Ravishing took the G1 Alcibiades Stakes and Keepmeinmind finished second in the G1 Breeders' Futurity. The latter went on to win the G2 Kentucky Jockey Club Stakes at Churchill Downs a month later.

He tied for the most graded stakes winners in his freshman class, and he finished third or better by progeny earnings, Grade 1 winners, and highest-earning individual runner. He'll have three more New York-sired crops before we see runners on the track that were conceived by breeders who knew what they've really got with Laoban, but a start like his offers nothing but blue sky for his future at stud, regardless of where he's standing.

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What We Know (And What We Don’t) About Equine Gastric Ulcers And The Impact Of Treatment On Bones

Gastric ulcers in horses have been a problem for trainers, owners, and managers for years now, and studies suggest a majority of racehorses and performance horses suffer from them. As a result, they've been a topic of much academic research in the past five years.

Dr. Ben Sykes, assistant professor of equine internal medicine at Massey University, sat down with the Grayson Jockey Club Research Foundation recently to give the public an idea of what we've learned in the past five years and what he and other researchers plan to focus on in the next five.

A complete replay of Sykes's seminar is below. A few key takeaways:

First of all, the term most of us use to describe this issue in horses is a bit outdated. Equine Gastric Ulcer Syndrome (EGUS) is still the common terminology in lots of advertising and lay articles about the topic, but that's actually a holdover from before we knew that there were two distinct types of ulcer-like disorders that could be happening in a horse's stomach.
Technically, there are now two terms in use which are more specific: Equine Squamous Gastric Disease and Equine Glandular Gastric Disease. Squamous gastric disease refers to ulcers in the upper half of the stomach, characterized by ulcers easily viewed on gastroscope. Glandular Gastric Disease refers to lesions [which technically aren't ulcers, but look and behave similarly to true ulcers] in the lower half of the stomach, particularly around the part where the stomach empties into the gut.

Until recently, gastroscopes were only long enough to reach the squamous part of the stomach, so we didn't really know if there could be problems lurking further along. The two terms really only came about in the last several years when the longer gastroscopes became common. Research we have on gastric ulcers in horses prior to 2015 is almost certainly referring to Equine Squamous Gastric Disease. Equine Glandular Gastric Disease is much less understood.
Why does this matter? The two diseases exist independently of each other, with different possible causes and different treatments. For Sykes, squamous ulcers come about as a result of management decisions that increase damage of stomach acid to the top of the stomach. The ulcers are caused by two types of acid – hydrochloric acid, which is reduced by common treatments like omeprazole, and volatile fatty acids, which are not addressed by omeprazole and come about as a way to digest grain. Sykes said researchers think that this acid damage occurs during exercise.
Studies have shown that exercise drops stomach pH, increasing the acidity. This is primarily because the abdominal muscles at a trot or canter squeeze the stomach into an hourglass shape, pushing the acid that was at the bottom of the stomach, where it was being buffered by a lot of fibrous feed material, toward the top, which is more likely to be fairly empty or contain thinner, more watery material. It's quite easy for the acid to splash around at the top of the stomach and cause damage.

High carbohydrate diets can be a problem for horses with this disorder since they require more volatile fatty acids to break down the structure of the carbs. That doesn't mean you can't feed an ulcery horse grain, Sykes said – you just have to do it in moderation. A balanced commercially processed feed provides a lot of important nutrients to working horses. Low carb, high fat and high fiber diets are good choices for keeping a horse fed without increasing ulcer risk.
Equine Glandular Gastric Disease on the other hand, occurs in the lower part of the stomach where the environment is commonly pretty acidic. Sykes said he thinks the disease occurs because the natural defense mechanisms of the stomach lining there have been compromised for some reason.
There's no evidence diet impacts Equine Glandular Gastric Disease, but workload might. Studies have shown that long stretches of work without days off make a horse more likely to exhibit signs of Equine Glandular Gastric Disease, and behavioral stress may be a factor as well. Horses with glandular ulcers have been shown to produce higher levels of cortisol in stressful situations than horses without glandular ulcers, though we don't know whether stress caused the ulcers or the ulcers worsened the horses' stress reaction.
A few discoveries from recent data: Perhaps surprisingly, omeprazole, the go-to treatment for gastric ulcers, does its best work on a relatively empty stomach. One study compared the acidity of horse's stomachs when they were fed free choice hay round the clock versus the usual racehorse schedule of two big meals with some hay offered in between. Researchers found that the drug worked best when the horse had an empty stomach first thing in the morning.
It seems misoprostal may be a better treatment for glandular ulcers than omeprazole, which works well on squamous ulcers. Both options improved horses' symptoms, but the misoprostal showed more healing of lesions on gastroscopy.
A new form of omeprazole available via intramuscular injection may show promise for horses with both types of ulcers. The drug isn't accessible in most of the United States yet, but one peer-reviewed study showed 100% healing of squamous ulcers and 75% healing of glandular ulcers after two doses.
For a long time, veterinarians have suspected a connection between prolonged use of non-steroidal anti-inflammatories like phenylbutazone and ulcers, so for a while they suggested giving omeprazole along with bute as a preventative. Sykes pointed to one peer-reviewed study from 2020 that showed that may not be a good idea. In the study, horses were examined after being given a course of drugs — either bute alone or bute given alongside omeprazole. The bute group did show signs of ulceration while the other group didn't, but there was a high rate of serious intestinal issues among the group receiving bute with omeprazole. In two cases, those intestinal problems proved fatal.
One of the big questions Sykes hopes to answer in the coming years is the potential side effects of long-term omeprazole use in horses – particularly whether or not it increases fracture risk by changing calcium and magnesium absorption. Initially, long-term use of certain types of ulcer drugs in humans was thought to increase fracture risk only in geriatric patients but a recent study in pediatric patients showed that short term treatment of very young children resulted in a 13 percent increase of fracture by age 12 or 13.
We don't have any data to show whether or not the same thing occurs in horses, and part of the reason is that it's difficult to exclude other risk factors for a fracture. The human data does have Sykes worried – not only about the intersection of ulcer treatments and fatal fracture risk, but also about whether ulcer treatments could predispose a horse to bucked shins or other bone maladaptive disorders.

Sykes said thanks to Grayson Jockey Club Research Foundation, he and others are currently constructing studies to look at the impacts of common ulcer drugs on mineral absorption in horses. With any luck, we should know more about the issue in the coming years.

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Bet To Lose? Irish Trainer’s License Suspended Six Months Over Acepromazine Positive

The Irish Horse Racing Board has suspended the license of Cheltenham Festival-winning trainer Charles Byrne for six months over an acepromazine positive, reports the Racing Post.

Byrne's trainee Viking Hoard was eased in a handicap hurdle at Tramore in October of 2018, and regulatory vets noticed the horse has a slow heart rate. A post-race test showed the horse had a “dangerous degree of sedation” in his system during the race, evidenced by the presence of over 100 times the International Screening Limit of Hydroxyethylpromazinehydroxide (HEPS), a metabolite of acepromazine.

Viking Hoard was heavily bet to lose on that day, but no evidence was found linking Byrne to those wagers. Byrne admitted to leaving the horse alone on two occasions for a total of approximately 25 minutes after arriving at Tramore, which the IHRB characterized as “neglect of the trainer” which may have allowed an unidentified third party to administer the drug to the horse.

“The damage was financial in the case of affected punters, and reputational in the case of the racing industry,” read a statement from the IHRB. “This case illustrates the specific and additional challenges and dangers to the integrity of racing posed by the widespread ability to back horses to lose races for significant returns. The desirability of this practice or how it might be better controlled within the available regulatory resources is worthy of further, constant review.”

Pletcher’s Pegasus Turf Trio ‘All Have Very Good Records’ At Gulfstream Park

He's won the Florida Derby (G1) more times than any trainer in its history and led Gulfstream Park's Championship Meet standings a record 16 times, including a staggering 15 in a row from 2004-18. Now, Todd Pletcher is looking to add the Pegasus World Cup to a crowded Hall of Fame caliber resume that already boasts multiple Kentucky Derby (G1), Belmont Stakes (G1) and Breeders' Cup race victories as well as a record seven Eclipse Awards.

Pletcher, 53, has three contenders for the $1 million Pegasus World Cup Turf Invitational (G1) Jan. 23 in graded-stakes winners Largent and Social Paranoia and recent Tropical Park Derby winner Colonel Liam. All three are coming off victories over Gulfstream's grass course.

“The good thing for us is they all seem to like this turf course. They all have very good records here,” Pletcher said. “We're pretty pleased with their final races over this course and the way they've been training, and the fact that their records are all good here gives us added optimism.”

Though he won't have a starter in the $3 million Pegasus World Cup (G1), Pletcher has enjoyed success in the event in past years, respectively running third and fourth with Neolithic and Keen Ice in the inaugural 2017 edition and fifth with Audible in 2019.

Pletcher is a five-time winner of the Pegasus' predecessor, the Donn Handicap (G1), with Harlan's Holiday (2003), Quality Road (2010), Graydar (2013), Constitution (2015) and Mshawish (2016).

“I'm a great fan of the Donn Handicap. It was a race that was very good to us over the years, but the Pegasus kind of brings it up a notch and makes it a must-see race,” Pletcher said. “It's always exciting to have horses running in big races.

“I think it's great that Gulfstream's done this with the two Pegasus races,” he added. “It gives us kind of marquee event at the meet where, maybe outside of the Florida Derby, we were missing that kind of marquee day.”

Eclipse Thoroughbred Partners and Twin Creeks Racing Stable's 5-year-old gelding Largent, winner of the Fort Lauderdale (G2) Dec. 12; The Elkstone Group's 5-year-old Social Paranoia, winner of the Appleton (G3) on the 2020 Florida Derby undercard; and Robert and Lawana Low's 4-year-old colt Colonel Liam are a combined eight-for-10 on the Gulfstream turf, with one second and one third.

Pletcher has won the Florida Derby five times between 2007 and 2018, with 2017 victor Always Dreaming going on to capture the Kentucky Derby. While better known for his prolific dirt horses, he has enjoyed success on the grass with horses such as 2007 turf champion English Channel and Grade 1 winners Honey Ryder and Wait a While, and he won the Pegasus Turf's predecessor, the Gulfstream Park Turf (G1), with Mshawish in 2015.

Other notable milestones Pletcher has reached at Gulfstream include career wins No. 1 (Feb. 25, 1996) with Majestic Number, No. 3,000 (Feb. 11, 2012) with Spring Hill Farm and No. 4,000 (March 18, 2016) with Eagle Scout.

While he figures in the mix for two of the five graded-stakes on the Pegasus undercard – the $125,000 Fred W. Hooper (G3) with Haikal and $125,000 La Prevoyante (G3) on turf with Always Shopping and Cap de Creus – Pletcher would like to add a Pegasus Turf win to his long list of Gulfstream accomplishments.

“I'd like to hope that it shows our versatility, that were able to be successful on turf and dirt, and with younger horses and older horses,” he said. “It'd be a fun win for any of the three that hopefully could do it.”

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