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As much sense as we thought Munnings made for Mo Light last year in her maiden voyage to the breeding shed, our belief in this particular match has only increased in the intervening year, and she will be bred back to Munnings a second time in 2019 in another Housatonic Recommended Mating.
We have mentioned repeatedly how highly we think of Munnings as a stallion, and with his stud fee reduced to $20,000 in 2019, he has to be the best value sire in the business (if he wasn’t already). To hit some of the highlights: from his first 413 foals of racing age, including 128 2-year-olds of 2018, he has 27 stakes winners — an excellent 7%. This includes a pair of Grade 1 winners and eleven total Graded stakes winners. If you take this year’s 2-year-olds out of the stats (he does have one juvenile stakes winner this year), he has 9.5% stakes winners/foals aged 3 and up, and 3.9% Graded winners/foals. He has also accomplished this without much help from his mates, so far, as he has a 1.61 AEI/1.27 CI ratio. With his better-bred crops coming shortly (starting with his 2018 yearlings, of which 64 averaged almost $80,000 this year, compared to his 2017 yearling average of $52,000 for 56 sold), these statistics are only going to improve in the coming years.
When we recommended Munnings for Mo Light last year, we noted that her dam was a half-sister to Graded winners by Gone West and Storm Cat, who are the sire and broodmare sire of Munnings’s sire Speightstown, that the nick scored a solid rating (Gone West over Indian Charlie), and that the reverse cross of Uncle Mo with Gone West had also performed well. Since that time, the cross has improved its rating substantially thanks to the exploits of two sons of Speightstown from Indian Charlie mares who were not included in the fifteen best horses on the rated cross a year ago. More specifically, Switzerland has scored five victories this year including the De Francis Dash and the Maryland Sprint (both Grade 3), while Wyatt’s Town has won his last four starts, including two stakes at Woodbine. Meantime, the Uncle Mo/Gone West reverse cross has also added an additional stakes winner in the last year in Rally Cry.
Munnings himself already has a winner already out of an Indian Charlie mare in two-time 2018 Belmont Park winner Mad Munnys (one of three winners by sons of Speightstown from daughters of Indian Charlie), and from just six foals, Speightstown has those two stakes winners from Indian Charlie mares — so the cross has a bright future.
Physically we like this pairing also. Since Mo Light is not as tall as some of Uncle Mo’s progeny, that makes this more a case of like-to-like than might be expected on paper, with the bulky and powerful Munnings poised to add some mass to the foals of the balanced and racy Mo Light.
Switzerland, by Munnings’s sire Speightstown out of an Indian Charlie mare, wins the G3 Maryland Sprint
Switzerland, by Munnings’s sire Speightstown out of an Indian Charlie mare, wins the G3 DeFrancis Dash
Munnings wins the G2 Woody Stephens
Munnings wins the G2 Tom Fool
Munnings breezes prior to selling for $1.8 million at Calder