By Dick Jerardi
Hold Your Breath had a serious problem with getting her breath early in her training.
“She had a flap in her nostril, not in her trachea,” trainer John Servis said. “All they did was sow that back. When they were breaking her as a yearling, I remember the guy from the farm calling me and he said we got an issue here ‘this filly can’t breathe and she’s a nervous wreck because she can’t breathe.'”
As an experiment, according to Servis, Bryan Rice of Woodside Ranch in Ocala, Florida, “super glued (the flap) back to see if it made a difference and it did so we went ahead and sowed it back.”
Problem solved.
The 3-year-old filly has gotten a clear lead four times in her career. And she has won every time, including Sunday’s $150,000 Garland of Roses for owners Main Line Stable (Dr. Louis Bucky) and Avalon Racing Stables (Will Schwartz).
Hold Your Breath won her debut at Parx in November 2024. She came off a long layoff to upset (29-1) an optional claimer (on grass) at Saratoga in June.
“She worked so good on the turf at Palm Meadows we decided to do the Saratoga race and she ran so good, I kind of left her on the grass,” Servis said.
Three grass races and one synthetic race later, Servis went back to the beginning.
“What it comes down to, she’s better on the dirt,” Servis said. “She’s got really good speed, but just not 5-furlong turf speed, and she doesn’t want to go two turns on the turf. It took a while to get back to where she wanted to be.”
Back on the dirt at Parx Nov. 12, Hold Your Breath could not have been any more impressive, winning by 9 3/4 lengths with an 87 Beyer. That performance prompted Servis to look at the Garland of Roses.
When he noticed Joel Rosario was riding the Cigar Mile card Saturday, he called the jockey’s agent Ron Anderson to see if he was sticking around for Sunday’s card. He was so he got the mount.
“I’ve had a lot of luck with him,” Servis said.
In fact, Rosario rode Cathryn Sophia early in her 3-year-old season, but got hurt before she won the Kentucky Oaks. Rosario also rode 2-year-old filly champion Jaywalk for Servis.
Rosario put 3-1 Hold Your Breath on the lead from her outside post, was shadowed the entire 6-furlong trip by 3-2 favorite With the Angels (trainer Linda Rice, jockey Flavien Prat), re-broke in the stretch to win by a comfortable 2 lengths in 1:09.76 which equated to a career-best 94 Beyer.
Rosario was suitably impressed and told Acacia Clement on NYRA’s FS2 show that “she looked like she liked the competition with the horse coming outside so that was nice.”
Hold Your Breath was purchased for $135,000 at a January 2023 yearling sale. For a while, that did not look like money well spent. Now, it surely does.
The filly has an interesting backstory. She is by 2018 Pennsylvania Derby winner and $3.4 million earner McKinzie out of Illicit Affair, a mare that started four times and did not win back in 2013.
She was by two-time Breeders’ Cup Sprint champion Midnight Lute out of two-time divisional champion Silverbulletday (1999 Kentucky Oaks and Alabama winner). Her racing career for owner Mike Pegram and trainer Bob Baffert may not have turned out as they had hoped, but her foals have now combined to earn nearly $400,000 from 59 starts with 28 in the money finishes.
One of those foals, My Sweet Affair, is trained by George Weaver and stakes placed on grass. There was a delay in the paddock before Hold Your Breath’s Saratoga race when Servis got a call from Weaver inquiring about the filly’s affinity for grass.
“He bet on her that day,” Servis remembered. “He texted me after the race all these dollar signs.”
There will be no shortage of sprint stakes for Hold Your Breath next year.
“She won’t be running every three weeks, I can tell you that,” Servis said.
But she will be running and “point toward bigger races as we get into the spring.”
And now that Hold Your Breath has no breathing issues and seems to be getting better with every race, it is not at all clear if she has reached her ceiling.
