Page 88 - September 2016

The show must go on, but it can’t without outriders and pony horses
by Richard Chamberlain
Amind, as the saying goes, is a terrible thing to waste. That is to say, a mind must be continually developed and improved to reach its full potential.
The reference generally is to the human mind, particularly as it pertains to those humans who seek to improve their lot through education and subsequent jobs
and careers. But, it is just as true for horses, especially those that have jobs. On the track, the most important job any horse whose name isn’t listed in the program pages can have is as the mount for the outriders.
“The outrider is the safety cop out there,” said former jockey and outrider Robert ‘Robbie’ Edwards last month in the first
part of the “Riding Herd” series. “The horse needs to be solid and you need to be able to count on him when you need him. He has to have a decent mind on him. Some horses can handle it and some just can’t.”
The rider who in 1983 piloted Face In The Crowd to a national championship, Robbie, now 55, later was an outrider at The Downs At Albuquerque and SunRay Park at Farmington, New Mexico. He later published and edited Southwest Racing News and has done everything from breaking colts, training roping horses, and leading trail rides to his current gigs as a horse photographer and riding as an extra in western movies. He knows his way around horses and racetracks, and his ideas and opinions about what it takes to make an outriding horse are echoed by another former jockey who now outrides at Ruidoso Downs.
“No, not all horses can do it,” agrees Mike “Mitch” Mitchell. “They all don’t make it. But if you just take your time and their brain stays with you, heck, the rest is just easy.”
Now 63, Mitchell grew up breaking horses and cowboying on a ranch in South Dakota. He rode races for four years before his 6’ 1” frame filled out in his late teens and early twenties. He still works cows all winter on various ranches in New Mexico. He also worked on the starting gate at Ruidoso for more than a decade, a stint that ended with a wreck when a horse blew up in the gate. The jockey escaped with a few scratches, but Mitchell wound up on the sidelines.
“I worked the gate here at Ruidoso for 10 or 15 years,” he says. “I had a horse
just crash the heck outta me, broke my shoulder. Took a year off. They rebuilt it a couple times and they finally got it right. Well, the general manager at the time was Rick Baugh, a friend of mine. We sat down and I said, ‘Rick I need a job.’ He said, ‘Mitch, I need an outrider.’ That was 10 or 12 years ago. I’ve been doing it ever since.”
86 SPEEDHORSE, September 2016
Photo by Bee Silva