Todd Pletcher understands that expectations for Uncle Mo far exceed an
anticipated victory in Saturday’s $100,000 Timely Writer at Gulfstream Park.
With 2010 Horse of the Year Zenyatta retired and confirmed in foal to Bernardini,
his undefeated three-year-old colt is widely viewed as Thoroughbred racing’s
Next Big Thing — a rare specimen with the talent and charisma to capture the
imagination of the American public.
“It’s a position you want to be in — to have a horse of his caliber. Along
with that, obviously, comes a lot of added exposure and excitement and pressure
and everything else that goes with it,” Pletcher acknowledged to
gulfstreampark.com.
“Zenyatta’s shoes are big shoes to fill. He’s 3-for-3 so far. She was able to
exceed that by a long ways. The races will only get tougher; the competition
gets tougher; the field sizes get bigger; so we’re just looking at this as the
first step and we’ll go from there.”
Uncle Mo has been rated as the 3-5 morning-line favorite in a field of six
entered in the one-mile stakes written especially to attract the Eclipse
Award-winning colt to Gulfstream Park for his three-year-old debut.
“We’re happy the Timely Writer filled and we’re able to run Uncle Mo at
Gulfstream,” said Pletcher, who has been training Uncle Mo at Palm Meadows,
Gulfstream’s satellite training facility.
“Palm Meadows is a similar surface and we feel like it’s a good place to
start a season. The horse has been training well. Everything’s gone according to
plan. We’ve had cooperative weather. We’ve been able to breeze whenever we
wanted to breeze, and he’s been training as well as he ever has.”
Uncle Mo will likely be an even shorter price than his morning-line odds at
post time due to his superior racing record, which includes a maiden victory at
Saratoga by more than 14 lengths last August, a victory in the Champagne S. (G1)
at Belmont Park in October and a stunningly dominant 4 1/4-length score in the
Breeders’ Cup Juvenile (G1) at Churchill Downs in November.
“I think the Breeders Cup Juvenile was his best race,” Pletcher said. “It was
his first race around two turns against the best horses in the world. I think it
was important that it was Churchill Downs and he’s proven that he can handle the
surface. It was his most impressive performance, although all three were pretty
impressive.”
Pletcher expects Uncle Mo to offer more of the same in the Timely Writer.
“I think he’s grown a touch, but he was a pretty big two-year-old — and,
obviously, a very talented two-year-old. So we don’t feel like we need to
improve a lot. It seems like he’s come along and done everything we’d expect him
to do as a young three-year-old.
“Mentally, he’s always been a very, very easy horse to be around, so, so far,
everything’s been great.
“I think you worry about everything,” Pletcher admitted. “The main thing is
we just want a good, clean race and have a healthy start to the year for him. We
just hope he shows up and runs the way he’s capable of and everything will take
care of itself.”
As Uncle Mo starts on the Road to the Kentucky Derby in the Timely Writer,
his trainer is brimming with confidence in his colt’s foundation.
“I don’t think we have to prove anything,” Pletcher said. “We’ve checked off
a lot of boxes in a short period of time; he’s handled the Grade 1 competition
twice; he won the first time out, which makes you worry less about a layoff; he
handled the surface at Churchill; so a lot of those things, he’s proven he can
handle.”
Pletcher now knows how it feels to win the Kentucky Derby, having saddled
Super Saver for a victory last year at Churchill Downs. Uncle Mo, though, has
set the bar a little higher this year.
“Certainly, it takes a little heat off of it,” he said. “Anytime you have a
horse like Uncle Mo, and if you get lucky enough to show up at Churchill Downs
undefeated, then that’ll be plenty of excitement of its own.”
Uncle Mo is the only Grade 1 winner in the Timely Writer, which attracted a
trio of lightly-raced colts in the Richard Dutrow-trained ROCKING OUT (Include),
a first-out winner who subsequently finished a troubled third in a Gulfstream
allowance last month; the Kiaran McLaughlin-trained RATTLESNAKE BRIDGE (Tapit),
who scored at first asking last month at Gulfstream Park; and the Tom Albertrani-trained
GALLANT DREAMS (Bernardini), a maiden winner in his second start at Belmont last
fall who’ll be making his 2011 debut.
MADMAN DIARIES (Bring the Heat), who finished seventh in the February 26
Hutcheson (G2) at Gulfstream after winning the Sapling (G3) at Monmouth last
year, was entered, but trainer Wesley Ward has emphasized that the speedy
gelding could well be withdrawn. Rounding out the short field is SCHOOLYARD CAT
(Catienus), whose only victory in seven starts came in a $35,000 claiming race
at Gulfstream three starts back.
McLaughlin is certainly not entertaining the thought of pulling off an upset,
but will saddle Rattlesnake Bridge for the one-mile stakes with the sole
objective of gaining experience for his promising colt in only his second
lifetime start.
“We entered in an allowance race, and the allowance race didn’t fill,”
McLaughlin said. “There were only four that entered into it. We felt like we
need to run to see where we stand. It’s good timing moving forward and from his
maiden win.
“We didn’t want to hook up with Mo, obviously — none of us wanted to. But we
just needed to run and a mile suits us well. He’s a nice colt who needs racing.”
Rattlesnake Bridge made an impressive debut to racing on February 12 when he
closed from off the pace to win going away by 1 1/4 lengths under John
Velazquez.
“This is jumping up from a maiden win to hooking the two-year-old champion.
It’s not ideal, but we’re trying to learn about our horse,” McLaughlin said. “If
he gets the mile and comes running and gets second or third, he’ll learn from
it. He needs racing.”
Purchased by Hill House for $450,000 last year, Rattlesnake Bridge will be
ridden for the first time by Jose Lezcano. Velazquez, of course, will renew his
perfect partnership with Uncle Mo.