Retama-based Wasted Tears retired to become broodmare

Nov. 2, 2011 - Wasted Tears, the Texas-based mare who developed into one of the top turf females in North America, has been retired, said her breeder, owner, and trainer, Bart Evans. She has been sent to a Lexington, Ky., farm and will be bred next year to a stallion that has yet to be determined.

“I’m kicking things around, looking at what makes a best match,” Evans said of his stallion search. “I like looking at them physically, to see how they would complement” her.

Wasted Tears won six graded stakes during her career, chief among them the Grade 2 Jenny Wiley at Keeneland over champion Forever Together in 2010, and the Grade 2 John C. Mabee the same year in her first of three trips to Southern California. Wasted Tears, who is a 6-year-old daughter of Najran, won 12 of 22 starts and $941,463.

“She ran hard,” Evans said. “Look at the form she carried through the amount of years she carried it.”

Wasted Tears won her career debut in September 2007 at Retama Park near San Antonio. She would later go on to win seven straight races between May 2009 and August 2010. During the streak, Wasted Tears collected two of her three wins in the Grade 3, $200,000 Ouija Board Distaff at Lone Star Park near Dallas.

She last raced on Oct. 8, shipping from her Retama base to Keeneland and finishing a close fourth in the Grade 1 First Lady. Wasted Tears had been considered for a start later this month in the Grade 1 Matriarch at Hollywood Park, but Evans ultimately decided to retire her after the First Lady.

“I thought it would be better for her to get turned out at that time than to run in the Matriarch at the end of November, then haul back to Kentucky,” he said. “I just thought it would be good that she gets to be acclimated before the winter gets really, really bad.”

Evans, meanwhile, has had to acclimate to a racing stable now void of the best horse he ever bred, raced, or trained.

“I miss her,” he said. “She’s family. She’s not a horse.”

read more: By Mary Rampellini/DRF