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.

Dennis Albaugh’s Albaugh Family Stable and trainer Dale Romans swept Ellis Park’s pair of 2-year-old maiden races Friday, with Not This Time romping by 10 lengths in the mile fourth race and Reedini prevailing by 3 1/4 lengths in the 6 1/2-furlong seventh.

“Wow! Wow! Wow!,” jockey Robby Albarado said as he was lead into the winner’s circle aboard Not This Time.

Not This Time, in his second career start after breaking slowly and finishing fifth in a tough Churchill Downs’ maiden race won by eventual Saratoga stakes-winner Bitumen, powered to a 10-length victory over Society Beau, covering the mile in 1:35.99 with a final eighth-mile in 11.82 seconds even with Albarado gearing down. He paid $3 as the 1-2 favorite.

“That’s impressive,” Albarado said. “What I felt was extreme talent there. What a nice horse! I rode him first time and he did everything possible wrong he could do. Today he broke, put himself in the race. I wasn’t planning going to the front, but man, a nice horse. Take nothing from the rest of them. But I could have squeezed him and sprinted home faster than he did. Some kind of feeling.”

Continued Albarado, rider of Horses of the Year Curlin and Mineshaft: “I’ve been on just a few of those. Just a few.”

“He’s the real deal,” Romans said from Saratoga, as he prepared to fly to Chicago for Saturday’s big race card. “I told Robby the first time he rode him that he might be as good a horse as he’s ever ridden. Of course, he didn’t break that day. This is a serious, serious racehorse.”

Romans said they were looking for a mile race to use as a steppingstone to Churchill Downs’ $150,000, Grade III Iroquois Stakes at 1 1/16 miles on Sept. 17, a race whose winner gets their entry fees paid and a travel stipend to the $2 million Breeders’ Cup Juvenile at Santa Anita.

“That was pretty spectacular, but I expected a big effort,” Romans said. “I knew that he was special. It’s nice for him to go on and back up what he was showing in training.”

Not This Time is a son of Giant’s Causeway, who also the sire of Albaugh and Romans’ Toyota Blue Grass winner Brody’s Cause. His mom, Miss Macy Sue, was a top sprinter who also has produced Breeders’ Cup Dirt Mile winner Liam’s Map and the stakes-winning Taylor S. Romans said he believes the source of the name is Albaugh’s chagrin over selling $1.35 million-earner Liam’s Map as a yearling for $800,000 at Keeneland’s 2012 September sale.

Channing Hill picked up the mount on Reedini when jockey David Flores got stuck in New York because of flight cancelations. Reedini also led all the way to prevail over Texas Sky, who wore down the Churchill Downs Racing Club’s Warrior’s Club to take second by a head.

“He’s all right. That was a nice work for him,” Hill said of Reedini, who covered 6 1/2 furlongs in 1:16.88 as the 8-5 favorite. “I’m just glad to pick up the mount. This is my first win for Dale Romans; I’ve had a lot of seconds and thirds for him.

“There’s a little greenness. But he’s very smart, an intelligent little horse, wants to do everything right. He kind of surprised me when he made the lead down the backside. Honestly, I thought they went a little slower because he just did it so easily. Then he took a couple of nice deep breaths around the turn, and when I asked him at the top of the lane, he got a little pressure and showed his little turn of foot. Then he just kind of idled from the eighth pole out. Even galloping out, any horse that takes you back galloping out, is one you feel like will really progress.”

Reedini, a $350,000 yearling purchase who is out of the same mare as the champion sprinter Midnight Lute, also was making his second start, having been third by a total of a half-length in the slop June 23 at Churchill.

Reached for a second time by phone, Romans said of Reedini, “This is another good one.”

Romans said he didn’t know about running the two horses against each other in the Iroquois, given the common ownership. “But we’ve got a van, we can travel,” he said. One possibility could be a race in New York, he said. “We’ll just see how things unfold the next couple of weeks.”

Trainer Ian Wilkes, whose horses running at Ellis Park are overseen by assistant Bob Tucker, won his eighth race of the meet as Lucky Seven Stable’s 4-year-old filly Sweet Tapper and jockey Corey Lanerie spurt out of the pack to take the $39,000 entry-level allowance on turf by a half-length over Sister Blues and Joe Johnson.

On the claiming-ranks front, James Utley’s Showbiz Star became the the fifth horse to win twice at the meet — and the first of those to also have a second — as the 5-year-old gelding captured the fifth race. Claimed by trainer Jeff Barkley for Utley for $8,000 at Churchill Downs, Showbiz Star was a close second for $7,500 July 9 at Ellis before winning for the same claiming price July 22. In for a $5,000 claiming tag in Friday’s 1 1/16-mile turf race, he won as the favorite by two lengths over Sky Alert. He was claimed back out of the race by his prior connections, trainer Thomas Trione and owners Bonnie and Ken Schreiter.

“We were just looking for something to win some races and got lucky,” Barkley said. “He’s a pretty neat little horse. It worked out well. You get lucky sometimes when you claim a horse; it doesn’t always turn out that way. He was in where he needed to be. The name of the game is to win some races, and we’ll find another.”

 It was an impressive season-opening display for the University of Evansville women’s soccer team on Thursday evening as the Purple Aces dealt preseason Ohio Valley favorites Murray State a 2-1 exhibition defeat at Arad McCutchan Stadium.

“We showed some good stuff today, but we were exposed at times with things that we need to work on,” UE head coach Krista McKendree said. “That’s what you want out of these games. Hopefully, we’ll leave here with some positives and things that we can build on going forward.”

The win, which saw the defending Missouri Valley tournament champion Aces come-from-behind, comes just one week into preseason preparations for UE, which will open its 2016 regular season campaign at Xavier on Aug. 19. The next home game for the Aces will be one week later as Cincinnati will pay a visit to campus on Aug. 26.

Despite spending the early part of the game on the front foot, it would be the Racers who drew first blood with a well-worked goal as Harriet Witchers and Taylor Richerson linked up on the right side of the 18-yard box before laying it off for Madalyn Germann’s opening tally in the 25^th minute.

Colleen Dierkes supplied the answer 15 minutes later with strike from just outside the box to level the affair in the 40^th minute.

“I found an opening and took a shot,” Dierkes explained. “It was a great ball in from Jordin [Campbell] initially, and I just really wanted to get back even after the first goal because I didn’t feel like I was on my mark. I wanted to make sure that I could get the goal back and tie it up.

From there, Murray State would have its opportunities going forward in the second half, but the Aces seemed to rack up the chances, thanks in large part to the return of Montana Portenier after missing last season due to injury.

“We know what she’s capable of,” McKendree said of Portenier. “Our newcomers are learning how to play with her. They’re learning her strengths, and she’s learning the strengths of those around her. We’re going to create chances in games, and we have to make sure that we take advantage of those opportunities.”

Portenier’s most frequent collaborator down the right flank in the second half seemed to be Sara Osinski, who ultimately broke through for the game-winning goal in the 75^th minute with a long-distance strike of her own.

“Last season, we started off slow before having a great ending,” Dierkes said. “Being a senior this year, I feel like we need to be able to come out and show people that even though we lost those seniors, we’re still a good team. I’m happy we were able to come into this game and get the victory to show for all the hard work that we’ve been putting in during two-a-days this preseason.”

The Aces will be back in action with another exhibition contest at Eastern Illinois on Sunday. Kickoff is slated for 1 p.m.