With his margin of victory totalling an amazing 101 lengths in just 10 wins as a freshman last season, Maritime trotting star Waiting On A Woman has proven that he waits for no one, not even that pretty little trotting filly Maple Leaf Spirit.

By Nicholas Oakes

“Sitting on a bench at West Town Mall. He sat down in his overalls and asked me, ‘You waiting on a woman?’

I nodded yeah and said, ‘How about you?’

He said, ‘Son since 1952, I’ve been waiting on a woman.’”

In the wee hours of the morning on April 15, 2008, those Brad Paisley lyrics rang all too true as one little horse-to-be decided he had waited long enough on one woman, and that was the day he was going to be born.

Mitch Tierney, 22, was taking a routine check of the mares that night when he found broodmare Southwind Faith with a colt halfway out. Mitch called his father Dave over and they pulled the foal the rest of the way out, then had to break the sac so he could start breathing. They called for a veterinarian and Dr. George Boswall came to their New Haven farm to run plasma into the colt, who wasn’t strong enough to stand on his own four feet, and hence had to have his mother’s milk syringed into him. The colt wouldn’t take his first steps until nearly five hours later due to a compound of issues including the next one to hit his system: colicing.

He coliced during the night, in the morning and again the next afternoon. With each vet visit, little light could be shone on what was really going on. Thankfully, it all stopped that day but not before Mitch heard a song on the radio that grabbed his attention and inspired his name choice for the colt. That song was “Waiting On A Woman” by Brad Paisley. Little did they know they were naming a Maritime trotting superstar.

Mitch and the first crop Northern Bailey colt had a good relationship from the start as he taught the trotter to play tag. Mitch would touch the horse’s head out in the field then take off, and when his four-legged friend caught him, Mitch would be touched on the arm and the horse would take off – albeit a little faster. Mitch remembers that often times when he would finally find the colt in the field, he would be sound asleep. This aptitude for rest perfectly explains why the colt got along so well with the next person to be introduced into his life: “Mopey” Corey MacPherson.

MacPherson, 21, works for trainer Ron Gass, a longtime friend of Dave whom they share ownership of a trotting mare with. Since it was Gass’ turn to break that mare’s foal, and since Mitch was in Ontario working for Rene Allard at the time, Waiting On A Woman was also sent to the Gass operation when her stablemate went. Since MacPherson was training the other Tierney family horses left on Prince Edward Island in Mitch’s absence, he helped break the colt with Gass. There weren’t high expectations originally for the colt as Mitch explained his older In Power-sired sister Racin With Lisa had “everything possible wrong with her,” and plans were to find the mare a new home as she had trouble foaling. Waiting On A Woman was going to prove them all wrong though, just not right away.

“All he wanted to do was turn around and look at me,” MacPherson says of the colt’s first time in the jog cart. “He would not go forward. He was more interested in what I was doing sitting behind him.”

The look of the thickly built bay trotter caught MacPherson’s eye right away though and while training he was no slouch either. There were a handful of other two-year-olds training down with Waiting On A Woman but it was apparent he towered over his peers.

“Really, training down he was just waiting up for the rest of them,” shrugs MacPherson. “He did everything right when the rest of them were hitting bumps and making breaks. He just kept going. He has trotted clean his whole life and has never interfered or anything.”

During this time, Mitch took the rest of his stable home from Ontario to join the horses MacPherson had in his care on Prince Edward Island – including Island Jazzystar, who started in a $3,000 claimer before racking up win after win and eventually defeating one of the top classes.
“Mitch was jealous that Dave and I were winning horse races,” MacPherson says of his friend’s reason for returning to the East Coast.

This response makes Mitch look over at his roommate from across the room, roll his eyes and shake his head before answering. “No, we had way too many to go with back home and Dad just didn’t have time for it,” Mitch says of the eight horses he had to train back down.

Waiting On A Woman would not join this group until before his first start, and since MacPherson had committed to driving a trotter owned by his girlfriend’s father, the Tierneys had to find a pilot for their colt. Family friend Brian MacPhee was put down on the trotter for his first start on July 7, 2010.

“I was just hoping he would stay trotting that start,” Mitch says of that stressful first race. Thankfully, he had no reason to worry as Waiting On A Woman delivered a 2:08 victory with a :29-second closing panel. “He shocked everyone that night,” says Mitch, “especially the way he came home. I realized then that he was as good as we hoped he was.”

After that start, MacPhee knew he had something special between the shafts but he couldn’t imagine what was to come.

“He was something else,” says MacPhee. “I compared him to Rustico Ben right after I got off him. That was the first time I drove him and I knew he was as good or better than ‘Ben.’”

With MacPhee in the bike, Rustico Ben took a mark of 2:02.1 at two and 2:01 at three while dominating the Atlantic Sires Stakes in the early 2000s before going on to bank over $180,000 in his career.

Sadly for MacPhee, dominating the sires stakes was not in his cards for 2010 as he had committed to driving Rustico Myjo weeks before for trainer John Pineau (who had also trained Rustico Ben).

The pair of trotters did not meet in the next stake, so MacPhee was still aboard for the time being. Waiting On A Woman, ­however, broke and finished third. When action shifted to Northside Downs in North Sydney, Nova Scotia, loyalty came first for MacPhee, who was about to get a glimpse of the dream ­season he was going to miss out on. Tierney had to find a driver and MacPherson was the logical pick after the trotter he committed to didn’t make the stakes circuit. Teaming with Waiting On A Woman, they romped to an 18 3/4 length victory in 2:06.2 in the sires stakes division, with Rustico Myjo a well beaten sixth.

But how MacPhee looks at it is he was keeping his word and still had his integrity.
“If my word is no good then I’m not worth much more is how I looked at it,” shrugs MacPhee.

The MacPherson-Tierney combination has proven to be a hot one. MacPherson was in the bike for almost all of the 45 wins in 2010 for the red hot Tierney stable, which boasted over $89,000 in earnings and a .356 training average. MacPherson himself had 82 victories in the bike, close to $137,000 in earnings and a .293 driving average.

With that duo now solidified, Waiting On A Woman won his next start in Truro by six lengths, but Woodstock, New Brunswick put a bump in the win streak as he made a break and found himself in a 13 length hole early. Instead of trying to navigate the tight turns that weren’t agreeing with him, MacPherson set the trotter in the middle of the racetrack and chewed up his deficit the rest of the race to finish second by half a length.

He missed his next sires stakes start due to sickness, but even in sickness he never missed a meal and continued to grow. When his temperature subsided, the connections had a different horse on their hands. His next start in the Lady Slipper Stake was a 2:03 track record victory over Summerside Raceway on Prince Edward Island.
Then the anticipated match-up finally occurred in the John Buddy Campbell Memorial Trot in Charlottetown: Waiting On A Woman was in against the then undefeated filly Maple Leaf Spirit and Ralph Annear, who is perhaps the most renowned trainer of trotters on the East Coast.

As MacPherson had the post position advantage, he tried to get a jump on Annear, one of his former mentors. They laid down an opening ­quarter of :30-seconds with Annear parked out, but he ducked on MacPherson’s back before the half, which flashed up in an unheard of :59.2. The 21-year-old driver just let his trotter coast the rest of the mile to a 6 3/4 length victory in 2:00.4, ­lowering Defiant Looks’ Maritime record by one full second.

“When I heard the time I nearly jumped out of the seat,” recalls MacPherson. “At first I thought we were ducking Maple Leaf Spirit. Now I realize she was ducking us. A couple young fellas go out and beat Ralph Annear, who always has the best trotters. It’s quite a story.”

Before that start, Annear didn’t know what he was up against as his filly had won her first seven races handily while avoiding the trotting monster. But in the final stakes events of the year, it seemed Waiting On A Woman had scared off the competition to lone divisions, so Maple Leaf Spirit was stuck racing against him and she paid the price. Maple Leaf Spirit finished second in the last five starts of the year to the colt, who towered over the competition both in size and raw ability.

“He’s just better than anything I have ever seen,” says Annear, who previously trained trotting sensation Maple Leaf Noble, a winner of 27 consecutive races during his career. “He’s just great. I didn’t even bother trying to beat him at the end. I was just trying to be second.”

Waiting On A Woman’s final starts of the year were a 2:01.3 track record by 15 1/4 lengths at Truro Raceway in the Atlantic Breeders Crown, followed by a nine length romp in the Maritime Breeders final and a 10 1/4 length score in the Island Breeders final in Charlottetown. He finished the year with 10 wins from 12 starts and $36,537 in earnings.

“He doesn’t like you pulling on him in the first turn,” says MacPherson. “He likes to do it on his own. Then he relaxes and comes back to you and you just chirp at him and he comes home in :29. It’s pretty simple really.”

Annear wishes he could have seen the colt race just one start over Woodbine or Mohawk Racetrack against Ontario Sires Stakes company where the colt would finally have to stretch himself out.
“I think anyone could drive him and anyone could train him,” says Annear. “Not taking anything away from the boys. He’s just meant to be.”

Waiting On A Woman, who was turned out at Pictonian Farms in Nova Scotia for the winter, picked up his training routine again on February 1. Mitch says the colt is bigger and stronger, and is right on schedule to qualify two weeks prior to his sophomore debut in the Atlantic Sires Stakes in early July.

“Plain and simple, he loves to race,” says Mitch. “He’s a once in a lifetime opportunity. We’re going to take it for all it’s worth.”

Mitch expects some more solid performances from Waiting On A Woman and sees the sky as the limit.
This prompts a question from an inquisitive MacPherson: “Oh, can we race him in the Hambo then?”
Mitch rolls his eyes again and answers with a definitive “no,” with the rest of the story to hopefully play out on the racetracks of Atlantic Canada this summer, either from him or perhaps from his younger Nikes Image-sired sister Have Faith In Nike. Who knows, she could be even better. If Brad Paisley has taught us anything, there is nothing wrong with waiting... especially if it’s on a woman.