The late Wudda U Think Now and jockey Dylan Davis after last year’s Alex M. Robb at Aqueduct. Joe Labozzetta/NYRA Photo.
By Tom Law
Thomas Mina remembers exactly how things unfolded the minutes after the hammer fell on Hip 324 at the 2018 Fasig-Tipton Saratoga New York-bred yearling sale.
“I went and found the people when they bought the horse, right up to them and told them ‘you got the bargain of the sale,’ ” Mina said after the colt he bred by first-crop sire Fast Anna sold for $60,000.
The colt, later gelded and named Wudda U Think Now, made his breeder’s statement sound pretty good over the next four-plus years. He won nine of 21 starts – including four stakes – and earned $564,750 for Stuart Grant’s The Elkstone Group and trainer Rudy Rodriguez before his life was cut short last month following a bout with colic.
Rodriguez reported the news last week to Daily Racing Form’s David Grening, saying the 6-year-old came down with colic about 10 days after his fourth in the Haynesfield Stakes for New York-breds Feb. 20 at Aqueduct. He was later euthanized after foundering at the University of Pennsylvania’s New Bolton Center in Kennett Square.
“It was very, very hard for the whole barn,” Rodriguez told the Form. “He was a nice-looking horse who always tried. (Grant) already had a home for him if he was going to be retired.”
Mina bred Wudda U Think Now in the name of his Mina Equivest LLC and foaled and raised him at his Five Oak Farm in Saratoga Springs.
“That horse was a gutsy horse, I’ll tell you that,” Mina said. “And Rudy and his team did a good job with him.”
Wudda U Think Now wins the 2022 John Morrissey Handicap at Saratoga. NYRA Photo.
Mina, involved in racing since claiming a horse with a friend in 1987, was at Saratoga Race Course last summer when Wudda U Think Now won the John Morrissey Handicap. That victory ended an 0-for-45 run at the 2022 Saratoga meet for Rodriguez and gave Wudda U Think Now his second stakes victory of the year along with the Hollie Hughes in mid-February at Aqueduct.
Wudda U Think Now battled a quarter crack after the Hollie Hughes, which sent him to the sidelines for a few months. He returned with a fourth in an open allowance race in late June at Parx Racing before the Morrissey victory. (Read more about the Morrissey on page 34 of the Aug. 13, 2022 edition of The Saratoga Special)
Wudda U Think Now later added a victory in the Alex M. Robb Stakes in December at Aqueduct along with a third in the Lite the Fuse Stakes at Pimlico Race Course and a fourth in the Hudson Stakes on Empire Showcase Day at Aqueduct. He ended the season with four wins in seven starts and earned nominations for champion New York-bred older dirt male and male sprinter.
The 2022 New York-bred champions will be announced during the New York Thoroughbred Breeders Inc.’s Annual Awards Dinner Monday, May 8 at Saratoga National Golf Club.
One of five winners out of the stakes-placed Unbridled Jet mare Unbridled Grace, Wudda U Think Now started the 2023 season with a victory in the Say Florida Sandy Stakes Jan. 8 at Aqueduct.
Wudda U Think Now was Unbridled Grace’s last foal. She was also the dam of stakes-placed winners C d’Cat and James Jingle, 12-time winner and $239,160-earner Dean Verdile and five-time winner and 4216,633-earner Sandy Belle. Mina Equivest bred all of those foals and the unraced Gio Ponti mare Lienau, who is a member of Mina’s broodmare band at Five Oak Farm.
Lienau is the dam of an unnamed 2-year-old New York-bred filly by Flameaway and a yearling filly by Global Campaign that sold as a weanling for $100,000 at last year’s Fasig-Tipton Saratoga October mixed sale.
