Torres attests to great work done by Jordan’s starting-gate crew

The whole thing took maybe five seconds.

But if not for the instantaneous reaction and action of Ellis Park’s starting-gate crew last Sunday, jockey Francisco Torres probably wouldn’t be riding this weekend — maybe never again.

Sunday’s scary mishap — when Torres’ mount, Blake Beauties, flipped in the gate and the jockey wound up going to the hospital — provides a high-profile case study of the horsemanship, agility, quick thinking and bravery that the starting-gate crew displays on a regular basis but largely out of the limelight. It also displays the amazing athleticism, toughness and durability of jockeys.

Here’s what happened in the fifth race, for $5,000 claimers going 5 1/2 furlongs on the turf:

“I’m in the 1 hole waiting for the other horses to load,” Torres said. “She went backwards so high. She didn’t throw me out the back, so I just stayed on her. I didn’t step off or anything. Well, when she came down, she went down forward so quick, that she threw her head underneath her front legs and pitched me right over her head. I didn’t have any chance whatsoever to react. I just fell underneath her. One second I’m on her back and the next I’ve got nothing but (her) legs.”

When Blake Beauties reared again, Torres fell from being pinned between the horse and the gate stall’s front doors. Starter Scott Jordan instantaneously pulled Torres out from under the gate.

“I’m on the bottom,” he said. “Not because she’s doing it intentionally, but she’s nervous and I’m down there trying to scramble to get out and pushing on her. And she’s going berserk. At one point I put my hands up to cover my face, and that’s when she hit me with a hoof and split my arm open. At that same moment I just felt somebody – which was Scott — reach up there and pull me right off from underneath the gate.”

A split-second later, Blake Beauty flipped, twisted and got stuck in her gate stall. By then, Torres was out and the assistant starters had unloaded the horse next to her and were backing out the others to keep them from getting riled.

“That’s instinct,” Jordan said. “I just ran out there and grabbed him. He was in a bad spot. And then he said his neck (was bothering him), and then I was worried, ‘Now, I’ve messed something up worse because I jerked him out of there.’”

Torres has resumed riding at a high level after three broken necks throughout his long career. So when he said his neck was bothering him, Jordan was clearly a man beating himself up. Jordan, however, was the only one second-guessing his action. State steward Barbara Borden, who saw the action live and in replays, called his fast work “heroic.”

The biggest endorsement comes from Torres.

“I called Scott when I heard he was concerned,” the jockey said. “I thanked him and said, ‘Actually, you saved my life.’ I would have done the same thing. What are you supposed to do? Let the horse trample someone in there?…. It was a very heroic move.”

Asked how long the sequence took, Jordan queried one of his lieutenants, Jody McShane, and said, “What do you think the whole thing took? Five seconds?”

From his post in front and just off the side of the gate, Jordan was in closest proximity, because his team was all behind the gate loading horses or in the gate with horses that had already gone into their starting stall.

In an equine version of NFL Hall of Famer Gale Sayers’ mantra in his best-selling biography “I Am Third,” the starting-gate members place their own welfare behind  the jockey and then the horse.

“That’s our first thing: Get the rider out of there,” Jordan said, adding of Torres, “And no one could from the back of the gate. It was just lucky I could get there from the front of the gate and do it, because nobody could get there quick enough. They’re trying to get the other horses out of there and keep something else from getting hurt. They’re doing their job, because I already had Torres and gave him to someone else and said, ‘Take him to the ambulance; his neck’s hurt.’”

The assistant starters still faced a dangerous situation with Blake Beauties. She’d gotten a front leg up on one of the pontoons, the four-inch ledge upon which assistant starters stand in the gate with a horse, and another leg under the gate. Still, extricating a scared horse who weighs a half-ton with very hard hooves from a confined space is just part of a gate crew’s job description.

“That’s just routine for us,” Jordan said. “You don’t panic. You don’t go yelling and screaming and everything. You assess what you’ve got to do and you do it. And you do it in a timely fashion and you try to keep someone else from getting hurt. These guys, they forget about themselves. They just go in and do it. It’s not, ‘I could get hurt when I run in there.’

“Everything worked out well. The horse got beat up some, but no serious injuries. Cisco got beat up some, but no serious injuries. If you look at it in the big picture, it was a good outcome on a bad situation.”

Meet Scott Jordan and his crew, along with jockey Sophie Doyle

The public can meet Jordan and his crew and see in person how they work to teach horses to break safely from the starting gate. “Making of a Racehorse,” Ellis Park’s Saturday morning fan experience staged in conjunction with the Kentucky division of the Horsemen’s Benevolent and Protective Association, begins every Saturday morning in August at 7:30 Central by the starting gate, with parking adjacent in Ellis’ south end parking lot by the Ohio River levee.

This week’s participating jockey is Sophie Doyle, who finished a close second in last Saturday’s Groupie Doll Stakes in only third mount since returning from a badly fractured collarbone. The free event, with kids welcomed, moves from the starting gate to trainer John Hancock’s barn, where conversation will include Dr. Bruce Howard, the Kentucky Horse Racing Commission’s chief state veterinarian, and KHRC director of enforcement Chris Clark. Also on hand answering questions  will be track announcer Jimmy McNerney.