Jay Hovdey’s unmissable series listing his personal favorites continues with the popular champion filly who found her true metier on turf
Like a princess born to a life of royal duties, her fate seemed sealed.
Both her sire and damsire were champions who never touched the green stuff, save for the occasional graze. She was quick on her feet and handy, blessed with the kind of whiplash speed that turns dirt races into gold. If she had been able to read – and who is to say she couldn’t have learned? – the gray filly Wait A While would never have dared to dream she’d someday make history as a fierce competitor on some of America’s finest turf courses.
On paper, the daughter of Maria’s Mon was a champion who raced for parts of four seasons, won 12 of 24 starts, and earned just shy of $2.2 million. She preferred things warm and dry, although she made the most of rainy days. Sometimes too intense for her own good, she was the New Yorker who captured four important California races and was then barely beaten in a fifth.
No matter the race or the pace, Wait A While could be easily spotted near the front of any pack, wearing her Todd Pletcher white bridle, her riders adorned in the green and white of Alan and Karen Cohen’s Arindel Farm.
She entered the world wearing a coat like iron filings that dappled in the sun and lightened only slightly through the years thanks to the gray thread running through a pedigree that goes back to The Tetrarch, Britain’s dominant two-year-old of 1913 and one of the most influential stallions to carry the striking color.
As the broodmare sire of both Mahmoud and Nasrullah, The Tetrarch owed nothing to the breed, but he shared the wealth with other branches of the family. In 1925, a granddaughter of The Tetrarch produced Baytown, winner of the 1928 Irish Derby and 2000 Guineas. Baytown in turn was the damsire of Grey Sovereign, whose best son Fortino sired Caro, the sire of Carlotta Maria.
Carlotta Maria started twice without winning for Hall of Famer P.G. Johnson. She was seven when she was bred to Wavering Monarch, a grandson of Majestic Prince, and produced Maria’s Mon, who won four of seven starts as a two-year-old before a fractured ankle forced his retirement in the fall of 1995.
Making a mark
Entering stud in 1997 as the champion of his generation, Maria’s Mon wasted no time in making a mark with a first crop that included 2001 Kentucky Derby winner Monarchos. Major stakes winners High Limit, Strong Contender and Awesome Maria followed before Maria’s Mon sired a second eventual Derby winner, Super Saver, a foal of 2007. Maria’s Mon died later that year from the ravages of laminitis.
In 2002, Maria’s Mon was bred to the five-year-old A.P. Indy mare Flirtatious, whose dam, Grand Charmer (by Lord Avie), won the graded Pucker Up Stakes on the grass at Arlington Park.
Flirtatious had just concluded a modest career with trainer Neil Howard, winning a handful of allowance races from a dozen starts. On the flipside, though, was a female family so rich in accomplishment that it was assigned a name and number by breeding pundits, specifically the “Sleek Dancer branch of Lowe family 9f”, as noted by pedigree analyst Jessica Tugwell in her deep dive. Sleek Dancer was by Northern Dancer.
Both Wait A While and champion three-year-old Lookin at Lucky were produced by daughters of Regal Feeling, a granddaughter of Sleek Dancer. Endlessly made a mark for the female family in 2024 with stakes wins on turf and Tapeta. Tracking back through the generations, discerning readers will find heavyweights as diverse as Cyrano, who set a track record for six furlongs at Santa Anita and then won the Brooklyn Handicap at a mile and a quarter, and the 1987 Irish Derby winner Sir Harry Lewis.
However, they all must defer to Nectarine, a foal of 1932, the fourth dam of Sleek Dancer, and a stakes winner in her own right. Three years later her full-brother hit the ground. His name was Bull Lea, the unchallenged king of a Calumet Farm racing dynasty led by Citation, Armed, Coaltown, Real Delight and Bewitch.
Flirtatious gave birth to her Maria’s Mon filly on March 4, 2003, at Lane’s End Farm in Kentucky for her breeders, William S. Farish and W. Temple Webber, Jr. Consigned to the 2004 Keeneland September yearling sale, Wait A While went for $50,000 to pinhooker Tim Hamm.
Return to the sales ring
Five months later she was in the ring again, this time among the two-year-olds in the Ocala February sale. When the hammer dropped at $260,000, Wait A While was one of three fillies bought by Alan Cohen, also the co-owner of the NHL’s Florida Panthers.
Wait A While was purchased on the recommendation of Todd Pletcher, who was fresh from his first national title in stable earnings. Pletcher would go on to win the title nine of the next 11 years.
“Mike McCarthy was working for me at the time, so I sent him to the sale to do some scouting,” said Pletcher, referring to the assistant who now runs a successful California-based stable. “What I remember most is that she breezed well, but the gallop-out was phenomenal. It was something like 46-and-change for the half, which really got our attention.”
In Cohen’s world of ice hockey, the Panthers were bogged down at the time in the middle of a 10-year stretch without making the playoffs. Wait A While, on the other hand, was ready to go for Pletcher in the summer of 2005.
Lithe and keenly athletic, the gray filly won second time out on the grass, then came right back to win the Miss Grillo Stakes by 6½ lengths at Belmont Park when the turf feature was moved to a wet main track.
“We weren’t surprised she was somewhat precocious,” Pletcher said. “But we really weren’t thinking we were buying a champion filly that was going to run on the turf.”
At the end of 2005, it made sense to try Wait A While in the nine-furlong Demoiselle Stakes at Aqueduct, always an indicator of Classic potential. With two other Pletcher fillies in the small field for company, Wait A While tore off on a healthy lead but then faded to fourth. Pletcher was far from discouraged.
“That was just a little too much for her at that point in her career,” Pletcher noted. “We came to Florida that winter thinking she was a dirt horse, and she certainly won the Davona Dale impressively.”
The trainer gets points for understatement. Over a Gulfstream Park main track rated sloppy, Wait A While and John Velazquez (right) tracked the early pacesetter then roared off through the stretch to win by 14 lengths, with Wonder Lady Anne L, the Demoiselle winner, a distant third.
Personality quirk
The Pletcher stable had a taste of winning the Kentucky Oaks in 2004 with Ashado. But as any trainer will tell you, once is never enough. From his deep bench of 2006 fillies, Wait A While had risen to the top. She was pointed for Churchill Downs through the Bonnie Miss at Gulfstream and the Ashland Stakes at Keeneland, hitting the board in both and revealing a personality quirk that would stay with her the rest of her career.
“She was tricky at the gate,” Pletcher said. “She went through a phase where she didn’t want to load properly. She was real bad in the Ashland and was getting to the point that she might have been leaving a little of her race behind the gate. We finally came to the conclusion that a blindfold was the answer. She’d go right in and there was no problem.”
Wait A While also lost her jockey for the 2006 Oaks. On April 20 at Keeneland, Velazquez sustained a fractured shoulder blade, two broken ribs, a bruised sternum, and an injured right lung when he was thrown after Up An Octave, trained by Pletcher, broke down while galloping out after winning the Forerunner Stakes.
Garrett Gomez stepped in for the Oaks, but then the race fell to pieces after a hot pace cooked most of the front ranks, allowing longshots Lemons Forever and Ermine to come from far back and finish one-two.
Wait A While held her ground for most of the race and finished fourth, then was moved up a notch on the disqualification of third-finisher Bushfire. It was a decent effort in a high pressure situation, but as far as Pletcher was concerned, Wait A While had reached the end of her main track career.
“Conformationally, she was made sort of like your old oil painting turf horses,” Pletcher said. “She was a little bit lighter in the rump than in front, with a deep heart girth and a great shoulder. That’s why I think the top of the ground was to her liking.”
So the Sands Point Stakes on the first weekend of June was circled, and then it rained. Once again, the race was moved to the main track and Wait A While reveled in the juicy going, splashing along on the lead and returning to the winner’s circle with barely a spot of mud on her cloudy coat.
Back on the grass
Pletcher was grateful for the effort, but still he was determined to get his filly back on the grass for the first time since her maiden win. To that end he looked west, to the G1 American Oaks at Hollywood Park, figuring chances were slim that it would be raining in California in July.
It was, in fact, bright and sunny, with the temperature around 80 degrees at post time for an American Oaks that attracted an international cast. Even so, they were no match for Wait A While, who left Japan’s Asahi Rising and Canada’s Arravale nearly five lengths behind at the end of the mile and a quarter.
After another easy score in the Lake Placid Stakes at Saratoga, Wait A While was back in California as September dawned for the Yellow Ribbon Stakes at Santa Anita. As the only three-year-old in the field of eight, she got a three-pound break from her elders, but she could have been a sport and turned it down. Like clockwork, once again Wait A While stalked, pounced, and drew off to win by better than four lengths for her fourth straight victory, with Gomez on board.
“Garrett got along with her well,” Pletcher said. “She was not an easy horse to ride, and she was not an easy horse to gallop in the morning. She put a lot into her training, so the challenge was to kind of keep her pace at a proper level to keep her in the feed tub. She could get a little light, because she trained so aggressively, and especially with the traveling.”
The only thing left was to try her hand at the Breeders’ Cup Filly & Mare Turf, run in 2006 at Churchill Downs. Rain was guaranteed, but there would be no switching to the main track. Wait A While hit a steady pace and finished fourth – best of the four three-year-old fillies in the field – as Ouija Board, Film Maker and the Pletcher-trained Honey Ryder filled the top three spots.
Eclipse Award puzzle
When it came time to cast ballots for the 2006 Eclipse Awards, voters were faced with a puzzle in the three-year-old filly division. Since the awards had been inaugurated in 1971, the championship had been reserved for fillies who competed over a distance of ground on dirt, among them an all-star array that included Ruffian, Susan’s Girl, Winning Colors, Genuine Risk and Go For Wand. The exception had been the sprinter Xtra Heat, whose 2001 record of nine wins in 13 starts was too brilliant to ignore.
In 2006, the stakes wealth was spread far and wide. On the grass, Wait A While’s only legitimate competition was Arravale, who won the Del Mar Oaks and beat older mares in the E.P. Taylor. Bushfire could not be ignored after winning the Mother Goose, the Acorn, and the Ashland, and there was strong sentiment for Pine Island, the Arch filly who won the Alabama and the Gazelle, finished second in the Mother Goose and the CCA Oaks, and then suffered a fatal injury running against older females in the Breeders’ Cup Distaff.
“They were always reluctant to go in the direction of a turf horse,” Pletcher said. “But when I was in Ocala that Christmas, I noticed she was starting to get a lot of support for champion three-year-old filly. There wasn’t a dirt horse with super strong credentials. She was so good on the grass, beat older mares, and had a decent record on the dirt.”
When the votes were tallied, the result was Wait A While 138, Pine Island 108.
At four and five, Wait A While wore her crown well. She won the Honey Fox at Gulfstream, back-to-back versions of the Ballston Spa at Saratoga, and ventured to California twice to win the San Gorgonio in the winter of 2008 and another Yellow Ribbon in the fall.
In her last hurrah, the gray mare was at her best in the 2008 Breeders’ Cup Filly & Mare Turf at Santa Anita. Wait A While started second choice in the field of 10 and looked the part every step of the way. Sitting pretty just off the leaders, she made her hallmark move at the top of the stretch to make for home.
At the eighth pole Trevor Denman cried out to the crowd: “Any one of half a dozen can win it.” Inside the final 50 yards, Wait A While’s gray nose bobbed in front for a few strides in a final valedictory moment. Then, with a gray whoosh of her own, the Augustin Stable mare Forever Together swept past to win by three-quarters of a length, accompanied by the Canadian longshot Sealy Hill, who edged Wait A While for the place.
Noble effort
Such a noble effort should have sent Wait A While into the sunset with heroic fanfare. Instead, the following month it was announced that her Breeders’ Cup post-race urine sample had tested positive for the presence of procaine, and if upheld she would forfeit her placing in the race.
“She had a little bit of a lung infection after the Yellow Ribbon,” Pletcher explained, both then and now. “She got her last shot of penicillin 18 days before the Breeders’ Cup, well outside the recommended withdrawal time.”
Procaine penicillin is an antibiotic used to treat bacterial infections. The inquiry and appeals dragged on for more than a year before Wait A While was officially disqualified from third money of $213,000. Pletcher was fined $25,000 and suspended 10 days.
“What was so frustrating is that California later changed its rules, where that would not have been considered a positive test,” Pletcher added.
The ruling made no difference to Wait A While, nor to her legacy as one of the most entertaining grass mares of the decade. She went home to Arindel, where commenced a breeding career that continues to this day.
History tells us that champions rarely replace themselves – even War Admiral was no Man o’War – but Wait A While’s first foal, by Distorted Humor, had the look. Named Zaikov and gray like mom, he was trained by Pletcher to win at first asking by 14¼ lengths in March 2013. Then fortune frowned, and Zaikov made only one more winning start before suffering a fatal injury at four.
Wait A While has had eight registered foals since Zaikov, all but one of them gray and none of them a stakes winner. For those of us who revel in the racing and let the procreation take care of itself, we shrug with indifference.
Of more significance is the lingering message of Wait A While’s Hall of Fame trainer, for whom she has been one of a dozen individual champions. “Definitely,” Pletcher said, “she was one of our all-time favorites.”
• Read all Jay Hovdey's features in his Favorite Racehorses series
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