TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 8, 2011 732-747-8060 $ TDN Home Page Click Here EVANS DISPERSAL STEALS THE SHOW UNCLE MO RETIRED Yesterday=s opening session of the Keeneland Mike Repole=s Uncle Mo (Indian Charlie--Playa Maya, November Breeding Stock sale became a showpiece for by Arch) has been retired from racing after tests the bloodstock of the late Ned Evans=s Spring Hill Farm, revealed elevated levels of the enzyme gamma- with the broodmare glutamyltransferase (GGT) in his blood. High levels of Christmas Kid (Lemon GGT also led to the diagnosis of Drop KidB Christmas a rare liver ailment called Gift, Green Desert) cholangiohepatitis this spring, cementing the which knocked last year=s champion 2-year-old off the dispersal=s domination Triple Crown trail. Uncle Mo when selling for a finished 10th in Saturday=s sale-topping $4.2 GI Breeders= Cup Classic. AIt=s a million to the bid of sad decision, but an easy one,@ Coolmore=s Aisling said Repole. AThis is just a rare, Uncle Mo A Coglianese Duignan. rare liver disease. Knowing that he's going to be Christmas Kid The dispersal, healthy, taken care of and have some great racing foals Keeneland Photo handled by Lane=s someday makes me feel good.@ Uncle Mo, a $160,000 End, was responsible KEENOV weanling turned $220,000 KEESEP yearling, for 18 of Monday=s top 20 lots and 11 of the 14 seven- was unveiled by trainer Todd Pletcher in a 14 1/4- figure sales of the session. In all, the dispersal sold 63 length romp at Saratoga last August, earning the colt head for $40,684,500. The average was $645,786 and the J “TDN Rising Star” J distinction (video). He the median was $320,000. While responsible for followed that effort with a facile 4 3/4-length score in 42.9% of the 147 horses sold at Keeneland yesterday, the GI Champagne S. at Belmont in October (video) , the dispersal represented 64.3% of the day=s and ran away with year-end honors with another $63,276,500 gross. brilliant 4 1/4-length score in the GI Breeders= Cup Juvenile at Churchill Downs the following month AIt exceeded my expectations, and I had high (video). ASince I was a 13-year-old kid, I've dreamed expectations,@ admitted longtime Spring Hill Farm about owning a horse like this--it was a dream come manager Chris Baker. AI=ve always felt that Mr. Evans true,@ said Repole. ATo win the Breeders' Cup Juvenile and Spring Hill had put together a spectacular group of was the highlight of owning Uncle Mo.@ Cont. p2 mares, and to see that the rest of the Thoroughbred world feels the same way is very flattering and very reassuring.@ Evans, who passed away last December, spent four decades establishing a world-class broodmare band at his Casanova, Virginia farm. He bred more than 100 stakes winners, including 2005 Horse of the Year Saint Liam and multiple Grade I winner Quality Road. The dispersal had international appeal, with buyers from the U.S., Ireland and France all taking home top lots. Ben Leon=s Besilu Stables, based in Florida, acquired five of the dispersal=s seven-figure lots, including a Keeneland record $2.6-million Medaglia d=Oro weanling. The Wertheimer brothers struck for Grade I winner Buster=s Ready (More Than Ready) for $2.4 million and Coolmore representatives took home a pair of seven-figure broodmares. The international attraction was no surprise to Baker. AI think when you look at what Mr. Evans did, our U.S. program was just quality based,@ Baker explained. AAnd at the higher level there is international appeal for what is quality. This is just another example of that same trend.@ Cont. p2 TDN P HEADLINE NEWS • 11/8/11 • PAGE 2 of 24 • thoroughbreddailynews.com Uncle Mo Retired cont. Keeneland cont. from p1 Uncle Mo resurfaced at three with another easy For Keeneland=s Director of Sales Geoffrey Russell, victory in the Timely Writer S. at Gulfstream Park in yesterday=s results were a fitting tribute to a man March, but tasted his first defeat when third at 1-9 in whose life=s passion was breeding the best possible Aqueduct=s GI Wood Memorial in racehorses. April. He was subsequently AThis is a life=s work,@ Russell said. ANed Evans spent diagnosed with a gastrointestinal 40 years developing this. He developed a broodmare infection, and was scratched from band that the whole world wanted. And the whole the GI Kentucky Derby a day before world showed up here to buy. Certain mares went way the race. Uncle Mo was then laid up beyond expectations, and it was a spectacular tribute at WinStar Farm in Versailles, to the man. These were the prettiest group of mares Kentucky, where he was diagnosed that I=ve ever seen in one collection. It=s a credit to him, with cholangiohepatitis about a and it=s a credit to Chris Baker. What they did together month later. The bay made what in the last 12 years, and what Mr. Evans did for appeared to be a full recovery in the 40 years, was reflected today. It=s a great testament coming months, and returned to the and a great comment on his life and his work.@ site of his debut 364 days after first Baker admitted the dispersal was bittersweet. Uncle Mo, Mike Repole bursting onto the scene, losing a AIt is very flattering in a way, with what we were able and John Velazquez photo finish to GI Breeders= Cup to be part of and help put together,@ Baker said. ABut to A Coglianese Mile winner Caleb=s Posse (Posse) in see them go into capable hands, that is as good as it the prestigious GI King=s Bishop S. can get for where we are right now; that these families In his final race before the Classic, Uncle Mo took the can go on, that 20 to 30 years from now, we=ll still be one-mile GII Kelso H. at Belmont Oct. 1 by three reading about horses from these families who are lengths (video) over GISW Jackson Bend (Hear No Evil), running. That we can=t do it ourselves is certainly earning a gaudy 118 Beyer Speed Figure. bittersweet, but hopefully they can continue to go on AWe got him back for the Kelso and it was great that and do something that we can be proud of.@ he got his redemption and he showed that he wasn't Russell thinks that the dispersal=s popularity is a just a precocious 2-year-old,@ said Repole. AProbably positive for the entire November sale. one of the most brilliant races of the year by any horse AWe knew that the dispersal would attract worldwide was his Kelso, so to get him back and have that one interest and it would spill over to the rest of the horses, more brilliant performance at three, with me being from and I think it did,@ he commented. New York, to get that brilliance one more time on a Three Chimneys= Case Clay agreed. Three Chimneys New York racetrack was special.@ sold one of the few non-dispersal seven-figure lots Uncle Mo arrived at Coolmore=s Ashford Stud in yesterday in Life At Ten (Malibu Moon), who brought Versailles Monday afternoon, where he is set to stand $1.95 million. the 2012 season. Coolmore purchased the colt=s ASo much of this has to do with the Ned Evans breeding rights in August, with Repole maintaining a dispersal,@ Clay said. AIt gets people here, but also, a lot interest in his star in the shed. Uncle Mo=s condition is of people try to buy the nice-pedigreed horses, and they not hereditary. AI could be in this game probably can=t get them, but they=re here, and they=re more apt another 100 years and I don't think I'll ever own to buy [other] horses if they are here.@ another horse as talented as him, because I don't think An additional 107 head from the dispersal are they're made too many times--maybe every 20 years or scheduled to sell during the remainder of the sale. - so,@ Repole said. Jessica Martini P TDN HEADLINE NEWS • 11/8/11 • PAGE 3 of 24 • thoroughbreddailynews.com It’s Like Christmas in November... Aisling Duignan handled bidding duties for Team Coolmore on Christmas Kid (hip 78) and, after the Irishwoman signed the session-topping ticket at $4.2 million, David Nagle joked, ADid you enjoy that?@ Reiley McDonald, bidding on the phone from the back row of the sales pavilion, was the underbidder. Duignan confirmed the 7-year-old mare, in foal to Bernardini, will head to Ireland. AShe=ll most likely go Aisling Duignan Keeneland Photo home to [be bred to Coolmore stallion] Galileo (Ire),@ Duignan said. Christmas Kid captured the GI Ashland S. over Keeneland=s Polytrack in 2007 and won the GII Davona Dale S. over conventional dirt. She also triumphed in the Tropical Park Oaks and was third in the Virginia Oaks over the turf. She was proceded into the Keeneland sales ring by her first foal, a weanling colt by Elusive Quality, who brought a final bid of $525,000 from Tim Hyde. Duignan said the mare=s race record and her attractive weanling contributed to the purchase. AShe was good herself, her first foal was really good, and she=s magnificent looking,@ Duignan said.