Two-year old Bold and Brossy’s first race didn’t go exactly to plan. The filly unseated jockey Miguel Mena in the post parade but rather than heading back to the barn, the filly jumped a rail, and made it over the levee before heading out to U.S. 41N, briefly onto Interstate 69 and then Veterans Memorial Parkway. Among the horsemen following her in their vehicles were trainers Wes Hawley and Jack Hancock, who led in her apprehension.
The filly Bold and Bossy, had shipped into Ellis Park from owner-trainer Michael Ann Ewing’s farm in Lexington so didn’t know where the barn was.
“She came by my barn (overlooking the far turn) headed down the backside,” he said. “Then she jumped the rail and got off in the barn area. She was a ship-in, so she didn’t know where to go home.… She went through the barn area, on the levee behind the kitchen. We tried to catch her here (on the backstretch), missed her and then she headed down the levee toward the highway.
“So we jumped in the vehicles and started chasing her then. She went out on the highway. She went on 41 and then she took an exit when up I-69 on the bypass, came back on Veterans Memorial Parkway, headed back toward Waterworks Road. So we went down 69 to the quickest place we could turn around, and headed in behind her. All the time we’re hoping she didn’t get hit by a car. Along the way she ended up on the other side of the highway from where we were. A gentleman and his wife caught her. When we got to her, we took the tack off. I had a lead shank with me and put the shank on her. We checked her out pretty good while we w ere there. Superficial cuts, a little bit of blood. But all in all, she was in great shape for what happened.”
Jack Hancock, Trainer
“This scenario is the last thing you think of when they go to their first race, a 2-year-old baby race,” Ewing, who was not at the race, said from Lexington. “You think of all the silly baby things that are going to go wrong. I didn’t think this. But she’s doing well. Thank God for all the people who jumped in to go find her. Because she left town.
Thank God she wasn’t hit… For all that, and she ran a long way, “Thank God she wasn’t hit… For all that, and she ran a long way, she was just missing a couple of shoes. She did ‘grab a quarter’ (where a hind hoof knocks some flesh off the heel of a front foot), but it’s not bad. Most severely, she was ‘tying up’ (cramping) when they caught her, and she’s really dehydrated.”
owner-trainer Michael Ann Ewing
Hancock said she was worn out and begging for someone to catch her. A man and woman caught her by the side of the road before the Hancock and Hawley arrived. Bold and Bossy was tired and dehydrated but not lame. What a miracle that she wasn’t hit by a car.
Many years ago, I was riding a sales horse for a trainer. He bucked me off and, instead of going to the barn, he took off down the driveway and out onto the roads of North Salem (like the filly, he was knew to the barn). He too, came back in one piece, caught a few miles away. It was one of the longest forty-five minutes I’ve ever lived through, wondering if, because of me, that horse had been hit by a car.
I’m glad this story had a happy ending too.
Where did this happen? I don’t think there’s any mention.
Several years ago, about two miles from my house, a woman was riding her appaloosa on her fenced property. The horse dumped her, then bolted. He had four ways to go, three of them were easy and safe and he would have been caught up without harm. But no…as if the devil himself were aboard, he ran up the drive, jumped a fence (no one knew he could jump) onto the secondary road, and ran right into an 18 wheeler.
It was a mess, a sad one.