At a glance
- Status: In training
- Colt, Ontario-bred, foaled March 9, 2023
- By Modernist out of Miss Matzo
- Trainer: Kevin Attard
- Acquired at the 2024 Fasig-Tipton Kentucky October Yearlings Sale
- Owned in partnership with X-Men Racing
Behind the name
While the name Thundermaker is a great fit for a racing club that craves the adrenaline rush of their horses thundering by the rail to first place finishes, there is more to this name.
The Mi’kmaw are an Indigenous people native to the areas of Canada’s Atlantic provinces and Alan Syliboy is a Mi’kmaw artist whose work has been exhibited at galleries across Canada and internationally. In 2014, he created a series of paintings that became an art exhibit called Thundermaker. The exhibit was hailed as a celebration of culture and spirituality inspired by a legend about the travels of the Peacemaker who brought a message of peace, love, power, and unity to five warring Nations.
In 2015, Syliboy published a children’s book of the same name in which the Thundermaker teaches his son, Little Thunder, about responsibility and his identity. The exhibit and book followed the appearance of Syliboy’s Little Thunder character in an animated National Film Board short created for the 2010 Winter Olympics.
In 2002, Alan Syliboy was presented with the Queens Golden Jubilee Medal for Artistic Achievement and he later received an honorary doctorate from St. FX University. His award-winning Canadian Indigenous Rock and Spoken Word group called Alan Syliboy and the Thundermakers received three nominations for Indigenous Artist of the Year from the East Coast Music Association (2019, 2021, 2022) and won Indigenous Artist of the Year in 2018 and 2019 from Music Nova Scotia.
About the sire
Sired by Uncle Mo out of the Bernardini mare Symbolic Gesture, Kentucky-bred Modernist is an 8-year-old colt and multiple graded stakes winner who raced from 2019 to 2021. First starting as a 3YO, Modernist raced at Aqueduct, Belmont Park, Fair Grounds, Pimlico Race Course, Prairie Meadows, Saratoga, and Tampa Bay Downs. He was trained by William I. Mott, a two-time Eclipse Award winner for Outstanding Trainer who, at the age of 45, was the youngest thoroughbred trainer ever inducted into the National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame.
Modernist’s stakes wins include the 2021 G3 Excelsior, and the 2020 G2 Risen Star. He retired with a record of 3-2-2 in 11 starts and over half-a-million in earnings. Post retirement, Modernist bred 142 mares in his first book and his first foals arrived in 2023, including ours.
Modernist’s pedigree is loaded with classic stamina and champion horses. He was sired by sire-of-sires, Uncle Mo, a champion 2-year-old male of 2010 who sired more than 50 stakes winners from his first five crops of foals including Nyquist (champion juvenile of 2015 who won the 2016 Kentucky Derby) and Grade 1 winners Bast (bought by Donato for $500K and sold for $4.2M as a broodmare prospect after earning $825K on the track) along with Unbridled Mo, Outwork, Dream Tree, and Gomo.
On the female family side, Modernist hails from one of the most productive female families in recent racing history. He was the first foal produced by the unraced mare Symbolic Gesture, a half-sister to a pair of Breeders’ Cup winners and the daughter of the long-winded champion and 2006 Preakness winner Bernardini. A success at stud, Bernardini’s foals excelled running long, with 1 1/4-mile G1 Travers Stakes winners Alpha and Stay Thirsty ranking among his productive progeny.
Symbolic Gesture’s dam is Sweet Life, a stakes winner at 1 1/8 miles and runner-up in the 1 1/4-mile G1 Beverly Hills H. Sweet Life has been nothing less than a superstar broodmare, producing Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Fillies champion Sweet Catomine and Breeders’ Cup Ladies’ Classic winner Life Is Sweet.
About the dam
Thundermaker‘s dam was sired by Royal Academy, a Kentucky-bred who won the Breeders’ Cup Mile in 1990 to cap a 7-race career with 4 wins, 2 seconds, and $759,000 in earnings. He also won the G1 Carroll Foundation July Cup and the G3 Dermot McCalmont Tetrarch E.B.F. Stakes. As a yearling, Royal Academy sold for $3.5 million at the 1988 Keeneland July Sale.
