Page 96 - August 2016

by Richard Chamberlain
The show must go on, but not without outriders and pony horses
One of the oddities of racing is that some of the biggest, baddest and, yeah, fastest horses on the racetrack aren’t racing. Or even racehorses.
Some are ponies, or that’s at least what racetrackers call them. Others are outriding horses. In either case, the racehorses and their riders depend on them. Racing is a high-risk game of great reward, but always possible disaster, and everybody – horses and riders alike – want to do their jobs, go back to the barn or house, and be ready to work again the next day. It’s the job of the pony horses, outriding horses and their riders to get the racehorses on and off the track with as little risk and limited danger as possible.
“The outrider is the safety cop out there,” says Robert “Robbie” Edwards, a former jockey who was an outrider at The Downs at Albuquerque and SunRay Park at Farmington, New Mexico. “The outrider is watching all the horses at one time in the morning and
the afternoon. Your job is to keep an eye on everything – and I mean everything – and there might be a hundred horses out there at one time in the morning. You’re basically directing traffic and keeping an eye on everything going on,
and if something happens and somebody comes off their horse, that loose horse has to either be caught, cornered or gotten off the racetrack.
Former jockey Robert “Robbie” Edwards was an outrider at The Downs at Albuquerque and SunRay Park.
94 SPEEDHORSE, August 2016
Photo by Bee Silva
photo by Richard Chamberlain