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After being bred to two first-crop stallions for her first two foals, Hurryupandcomeback got a chance with as proven of a mate as you could imagine last year when bred to More Than Ready after her first foal knocked it out of the park as a Keeneland January short yearling. In 2022, Hurryupandcomeback goes back to the freshman sire well when she visits Uncle Mo’s son Modernist at Darby Dan Farm.
Stallion sons of Uncle Mo are all the rage after three of them placed in the top five of 2020’s list of Leading First Crop Sires (namely Nyquist, Laoban and Outwork), and Modernist has plenty else going for him, as well. A maiden winner in January of his 3YO season for trainer Bill Mott, Modernist stepped right up and scored in the G2 Risen Star Stakes next time out that February, before finishing a good 3rd in the G2 Louisiana Derby on the Kentucky Derby trail before Covid pushed that event back in 2020. Modernist returned at 4 with a game victory in the G3 Excelsior at Aqueduct, sandwiched between 2nd-place finishes in the G3 Challenger at Tampa and the G3 Pimlico Special.
While Modernist’s sire, Uncle Mo, was himself a brilliant champion 2YO and is now a leading young sire, Modernist’s dam is by the excellent broodmare sire Bernardini and is a half-sister to a pair of Breeders’ Cup winners in Life Is Sweet and Sweet Catomine.
Modernist also happens to be a drop-dead gorgeous physical specimen: he has plenty of size and substance without being quite as long and lanky as many by his sire, and he’s as correct as you could ask for, with great bone and balance.
He’ll fit Hurryupandcomeback for several reasons, in addition to being a commercial first-crop stallion. Firstly, the hugely talented Donna Veloce appears on Hurryupandcomeback’s page, and that G1 Breeders’ Cup-placed filly is a daughter of Uncle Mo. Meanwhile, Uncle Mo’s first-crop champion and G1 Kentucky Derby winner Nyquist is out of a daughter of Forestry, who is a half-brother to Hurryupandcomeback’s dam, Shared Hope. While TrueNicks gives this match a “no rating” (only 31 foals on the extended cross, 20 to race, 13 winners, two with black-type), Uncle Mo has had plenty of success with Gone West-line mares like Shared Hope (G1 winner Gomo, G2 winner Laoban, G3 winner Lost Raven, etc), so that makes us more inclined to overlook the lack of rating with Hurryupandcomeback herself.
This is also a mating where the physicals of the two individuals play an important role (even more specifically than usual): Hurryupandcomeback is a tad long-backed, and of her first two foals, one of them shares that trait (he being by a sire that’s a little longer as well) and the other doesn’t (he being by a more compact stallion). So with that knowledge, we were anxious to find her another mate who would hopefully give her foal a bit of leg but not double-up on the long-backed characteristic — hopefully that’s exactly what she’ll get from Modernist, in addition to his speed and class!