michael ann ewing | Horse Racing Free Tips

The Comeback Filly: How Bold and Bossy Made it Back to the Starting Gate

Many will recall the peculiar story of Bold and Bossy (Strong Mandate), the unlucky filly who got loose before her juvenile debut at Ellis Park last summer and was caught over 30 minutes later after making it to the interstate and crossing state lines only to be involved in a barn fire the very next morning. Now, her trainer Michael Ann Ewing hopes that soon, people will remember Bold and Bossy for something more.

Almost a year after that ill-fated weekend in Henderson, Kentucky, Bold and Bossy is not only back to optimal health, but she just recently made her first start in a $17,000 maiden special weight at Belterra Park. The filly grew leg weary and settled for third, but for Ewing and those who had a hand in nurturing her back to health, the race was unquestionably a major victory.

“It's sort of like being a parent and you have a child that has a great difficulty or a sickness or injury,” Ewing explained. “You nurse them and you don't know what the outcome is going to be and then when it's really positive, there's a very big sense of, I guess, pride. There was a lot of commitment there, a lot of time and a lot of energy. I'm just happy to see her healthy and happy.”

A $15,000 Fasig-Tipton October graduate, Bold and Bossy was one of three yearlings purchased by Ewing in the hopes of having success in lucrative summer 2-year-old races. As the trio went through the breaking process at The Thoroughbred Center, Bold and Bossy was by far the most difficult trainee.

“She was quirky,” Ewing recalled. “Even after six weeks as they were starting to gallop in the field, she would still throw in some bucks. The other two would be walking through the gate, but she would want to just run through.”

Despite her headstrong character, the filly proved to be the most forward of the three and was the first to make it to the races in August. Ewing entered her at Ellis Park, but the filly got spooked alongside the pony in the post parade. She lost balance and fell on her side, unseating jockey Miguel Mena, and was soon off and running.

“I was back in Lexington thinking how we got her all the way down there and now we were going to have to start back at zero,” Ewing recalled. “My assistant Kelsey called me and told me she was gone. I said, 'What do you mean, she's gone?' and Kelsey told me that she had disappeared.”

Escaping the outriders, Bold and Bossy sped down U.S. 41 N, Interstate 69 and Veterans Memorial Parkway. She crossed state lines into Indiana before she finally started to tire and was caught by a policeman and trainer Jack Hancock. She returned to Ellis in the horse ambulance and immediately received fluids.

Ewing opted to keep the filly at Ellis overnight so that she could rehydrate and relax before shipping home in the cool of the morning instead of loading her in a trailer for a three-hour haul home in the heat of the afternoon that day. It was a good idea in theory, but early that next morning, the receiving barn caught on fire.

“She was actually rescued by one of our groom's brothers,” Ewing noted. “I think there were five horses in the receiving barn and she was the last one out. She had been burned and we were worried about smoke inhalation.”

Bold and Bossy was back in Lexington at Rood and Riddle Equine Hospital by 9 a.m. that morning and spent three days in an air conditioned stall there. While the filly had no lung damage, the burns on her topline eventually led to her losing the hair and skin from her withers to her hindquarters. She had also lost two shoes when she got loose and had incurred severe hoof damage from running on the hot pavement of the highway.

When Bold and Bossy made it home to The Thoroughbred Center, additional fans were put in the stall to keep flies off her injuries. She was hand-walked daily until November and then went to the farm of Ewing's veterinarian Dr. Joe Morgan where she enjoyed daily turnout and continued to heal.

Early this year, Bold and Bossy again returned to The Thoroughbred Center. Her feet were healthy and while she did have scarring along her topline, the burns were completely healed. Ewing wasn't sure if the 3-year-old would be interested in returning to training, but she figured it was worth a shot.

“Since we're a racing barn and I bought her to race, I thought we would just see,” Ewing explained. “We put a saddle on her and we put a couple of extra pads on to protect her. Our number one concern was if the scarring would bother her, but it didn't. She went back into training and never had a day that she didn't want to go to the track or that she went off her feed. She was very forward and happy.”

As a member of the board of directors for the Secretariat Center, Ewing was quick to add that if the filly had not been interested in racing or had been in any way uncomfortable, she would have found a second career.

For now, Ewing said that they are pointing Bold and Bossy toward a second start at Belterra Park in the coming weeks. She admitted that the filly would probably never drop to the claiming ranks.

“It is a business, but there's so much time and energy and maybe fondness with her that I'm not sure I'd want to put her in for a tag. There's an extra aspect of making sure she has a really good outcome.”

Looking back on all that has happened with the appropriately named filly since she first arrived at Ewing's barn as a yearling, the trainer said she is proud of all that her team has accomplished in getting Bold and Bossy back to the starting gate.

“[When the fire happened], I couldn't believe it,” she said. “I thought that this filly was such a bad-luck horse. But now, I think maybe she's a good-luck horse because she survived. When I look at her now, which is almost a year to when this happened, she's healthy and she has matured and it's really unbelievable. I think she will still improve. She might be a next-time winner. I'm always confident. If you're not confident, you wouldn't be a trainer.”

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Kirkpatrick & Co Presents In Their Care: Viral Filly’s Trainer Went From Show Horses To Racing, Keeps Learning

Trainer Michael Ann Ewing found herself internet famous this summer for a strange series of events she never could have imagined. After a decade training Thoroughbreds, she had dreamed of one day being the trainer generating buzz ahead of a run in the Kentucky Derby or the Breeders' Cup. She still dreams of that. What she didn't figure on was that she would spend a few weeks fielding interview requests about an unstarted 2-year-old filly running down the highway.

“I even had a paper from Ireland call me,” she said. “A friend of mine who was up in Canada saw it on the news there. People were fascinated. It was a quirky story and people were concerned.”

Video of Ewing runner Bold and Bossy went viral after the filly dropped jockey Miguel Mena in the paddock ahead of her first race at Ellis Park in August and ran back to the backstretch before leaving the track property and getting onto the road nearby. Ewing had stayed in Lexington that day and sent Bold and Bossy with her assistant, with plans to watch the race on television. She saw the filly's outburst in the paddock and knew they weren't going to make the gate.

“Kelsey [Wallace], assistant trainer was calling me five minutes later, saying 'We can't find her, she's gone,'” recalled Ewing. “I said, 'What do you mean, you can't find her?' and she said, 'She has left the property.'”

Bold And Bossy ran down US-41, then to I-69 and onto Veterans Memorial Parkway, with cars whizzing by and trainers following her in their vehicles. Eventually, the bewildered filly tired enough she could be safely caught and immediately treated by the state veterinarian, who had followed her in the horse ambulance.

Ewing bases at The Thoroughbred Center just outside of Lexington, Ky., and normally brings all her horses home immediately after their races. Wallace and Ewing agreed that putting the filly on a trailer on a hot afternoon for a three-hour haul was not the best thing for her, as the highway jaunt had left her dehydrated, exhausted, and sore. Wallace checked on her throughout the night, running fluids to her and expecting a quiet drive home in the cool of the morning. Then, she got a call at 4 a.m. just before she was to head back to Ellis to load up. There had been a fire in the receiving barn, the person on the other end told her, and they couldn't find her filly.

As most people know by now, all the horses in the receiving barn that night made it out alive, thanks to employees of nearby trainers who spotted the flames. 'Bossy' was the only one who came out with burns, and at first Ewing thought they weren't too bad. She had a few places where her hair and skin were rippled but not bald and pink, so Ewing had expected her recovery would be fairly simple. As she quickly learned though, burns sometimes take a while to fully manifest, and the hair and skin gradually sloughed off from her withers over her topline to her hindquarters.

Bossy spent most of the summer hand walking in the barn at The Thoroughbred Center because she was recovering from some residual hoof bruising and other damage from her highway run and also couldn't risk the burns being exposed to heat or flies. Last week though, she received clearance to return to turnout and is now enjoying a vacation at a nearby farm, where she spends her days grazing alongside two mini donkeys.

Incredibly, Ewing said the filly has seemed back to her usual self mentally since a few days after the mishaps.

“Once she was home here, she didn't appear particularly traumatized,” said Ewing. “For days when she got back here, she was kind of wiped out because she had been so dehydrated but she was pretty much herself and perky … we won't know till we start training if she has any [mental trauma].

“What could have had a tragedy had a very, very good outcome … whatever she does, she'll have a good life.”

Bold and Bossy runs down US-41 after dumping her rider and escaping the Ellis Park property.

Ewing, who maintains a string of between 20 and 30, was hands-on in Bossy's recovery, the same way she has been hands on with every other horse in her barn. Like many racetrack trainers, she said she can't imagine any other way. But Ewing came to the track in a different route than many of her competitors.

Ewing grew up in California as the only horse-crazy person in her family.

“I begged my mother to learn to ride, so she signed me up at a pony club and they had school horses,” she said. “Before I could drive, I'd ride my bike an hour and a half to go to the barn and I'd be there all day. Before I had my lesson, I'd ask people if they wanted me to bathe their horse or braid their horse or whatever they needed.”

She started out riding hunter/jumpers in Pony Club, then transitioned to fox hunters and eventually got into Quarter Horses. She did a little bit of everything with Quarter Horses and Paints – reining, trail, halter classes, hunter under saddle – and loved every minute. Ewing's husband works in real estate in Los Angeles, and they attended races and other events at Santa Anita Park from time to time. They grew interested in dipping a toe into racing ownership, even though it seemed like a completely different world from the one Ewing knew. It was at Santa Anita they met Bob Hess, who agreed to train the couple's first horse.

“I thought, 'I can't, as a horseman, own a horse and just show up when it races. I've got to learn all about racing,'” she said.

While some particularly involved owners may have requested a phone call each morning or might pop by for a workout here and there, Ewing rolled up her sleeves and grabbed a pitchfork.

“I told Bob, I'm going to be one of those annoying owners who wants to figure it out,” she said. “I told him, I just want to be here all morning. I'll work for free.”

Gradually, she began selling her show horses as she spent more and more time in Hess' barn. By this time, it was the early 2000s and Ewing was in her forties – not usually the time that horse people make a major shift in horse sports. But Ewing has always considered herself a lifelong student of horses.

“In the horse business, I don't care what you're doing, you never know it all because every horse is different,” she said. “You don't train every horse the same. You can go 20 years and one will have some kind of injury or something you've never dealt with. Whatever discipline it is, you have to learn what makes your horse tick and what's going to work for your horse.

“I think it keeps you young and growing, even as you age. I always think I'm so lucky to have horses as a passion, and having showing as part of my background.”

She started off walking hots for Hess, then became a groom, and then a forewoman – all as she owned a couple of horses in the barn. She eventually became a full-blown assistant for Hess, taking a string to Kentucky for part of the year while he stayed in California. When it was time to go out on her own, Ewing wanted to relocate to the Bluegrass.

Ewing said she likes her set-up at the training center. The smaller number of horses allows her to still do a lot of work herself, and gives her the chance to turn horses out when they need rest and to send them out for hack days in the fields if they get sour or too strong. She has carried over knowledge from the show horse world, mixing ideas and practices to find what works. The horses you'll see from her barn in January have the same coats they did in mid-summer because Ewing puts them under lights and has multiple blankets for each, negating the skin disease that can accompany longer, sweaty coats as well as the stripping of a coat from a full body clip.

Ewing still dreams of saddling a runner in a classic race, and she came close when Barrister Tom was named as an also-eligible to last year's Breeders' Cup Juvenile Turf – but she knows that having graded stakes runners is a numbers game, and she's not interested in big numbers. In lieu of that, she hopes instead people know her as the trainer who's not afraid to develop a young horse slowly and problem-solve to find out exactly what they need to succeed.

“I think of myself as patient,” she said. “You wouldn't send a horse to me to rush. I'm very careful; I'm not going to run a sore horse. If it comes along all on its own, that's fine, but we're pretty patient.”

As for Bold and Bossy, Ewing is embracing her trademark patience. She has made no decision yet on whether she will try to get the filly back to a race, preferring to see how she's doing physically and mentally in late winter. Whether the paddock Bossy ends up in is the saddling area at a racecourse or a field at a riding stable or breeding farm, Ewing said she considers her story a success.

“Life throws you curves, as does this business,” she said. “You have to be optimistic and deal with setbacks and disappointments, because you have a lot of those in racing. I think it's a great game of hope. You deal with what you have and you move forward.”

The post Kirkpatrick & Co Presents In Their Care: Viral Filly’s Trainer Went From Show Horses To Racing, Keeps Learning appeared first on Horse Racing News | Paulick Report.

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Ellis Park To Honor Heroic Grooms Who Saved Horses From Barn Fire

Before he went back into the barn where flames were expanding at an alarming rate, Marvin Prado thought about his wife, who was seven months pregnant with their first child and experiencing complications with high blood pressure.

“What happens to them if something happens to me?” flashed through his mind, Prado said recently. Then he went back into Ellis Park's burning receiving barn and got the last horse out. After that, he resumed cleaning out the stalls of the horses in his care for trainer Eddie Kenneally. Ellis Park is located in Henderson, Ky.

Asked later why he went back into the flaming barn, Prado said: “There wasn't any option. The horse had to get out.”

The next day, Prado was back in Louisville, where he lives. His wife had labor induced, their daughter born two months prematurely.

A lot of people across America have heard the story of Bold and Bossy. That's the 2-year-old filly who got loose in the post parade and ran off the track and over the levee before going onto the highway and interstate until finally being stopped with a huge assist from trainers Wes Hawley and Jack Hancock, who had independently jumped in their trucks in pursuit of the filly. In a bizarre twist of fate, Bold and Bossy, kept overnight because of her traumatic misadventure rather than vanning back to Lexington, was among the six racehorses and a pony in the receiving barn (for horses shipping in to race) when it caught fire in the wee hours of Sunday, Aug. 22.

Fewer people know how those horses got out of their stalls and the barn, which was completely engulfed in fire in perhaps 20 minutes. Those on the scene and already at work at 4 a.m. say the man of the moment was Prado, with assistance from fellow Kenneally grooms Cristobal Munoz and Estuardo Godoy. Brendan Walsh's grooms Salvador Hernandez and Jose Garcia also were involved, including extricating their stable pony, the retired racehorse Scuba, from the barn.

Ellis Park hopes to recognize the backstretch workers during the races this weekend, contingent upon the availability of Prado, whose baby remains hospitalized.

“Racing is a way of life. Taking care of our horses is a way of life,” said Michael Ann Ewing, Bold and Bossy's owner and trainer. “These guys who stepped in — most of them I've never met — they're heroes. They just dropped everything. Especially those guys who ran into a burning barn without thinking and saved seven horses. Because it could have been really bad.

“They're brave. They're kind. They love their horses. People just come together when any of us need help: People running into that fire or chasing my filly down the road, trying to find her. And the response afterward! So many texts, emails, and Facebook questions: 'How is your filly?' I personally want to extend my thanks to everybody and to Marvin, and all who helped him. What could have been a tragedy is not, through people just stepping up and not thinking about themselves.”

Prado was at work, cleaning his horses' stalls and about to empty a wheel barrel when he looked over at the nearby receiving barn and saw flames. He says he hollered to his workmates and they rushed over. Prado told his story at the encouragement of Kentucky HBPA Hispanic Liaison Julio Rubio, who helped with translation.

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According to those at the scene, Prado jumped into action and one by one retrieved the six racehorses, getting them out by their halters without a lead shank and handing them to his colleagues, who then found empty stalls for the horses.

“They are guys who have been with us a long time,” Kenneally said. “They are good people, so their natural instinct is to try to help. If there's a situation where you're needed, they're the type of people who will jump in and do the right thing.”

Prado estimated it took “two or three minutes” to get the six horses out. Five minutes later, he said the barn was completely immersed in flames. Seven fire departments assisted in extinguishing the fire.

“These acts of bravery are a testament to the real folks who represent this industry in largely unseen capacities and actions,” said Ellis Park racing secretary Dan Bork. “To do what they did, to run into a building engulfed in flames — and then go about their business as if nothing ever happened, like what they did wasn't anything out of the ordinary — they're true heroes with their totally selfless acts of courage.

“These are two unbelievable stories that happened in a one-day span that you could never even imagine. But it shows how much the people in this game really do care when it comes to taking care of these horses, including Wes and Jack chasing the filly down a highway. You can't make it up.”

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2-Year-Old Filly Escapes Ellis for Interstate

In a bizarre incident Saturday at Ellis Park, 2-year-old filly Bold and Bossy (Strong Mandate) got loose in the post parade prior to the first race after unseating rider Miguel Mena, ran off the track, and went on a merry tour of U.S. 41N, Interstate 69, and Veterans Memorial Parkway. She made it quite a distance, crossing state lines from Kentucky into Indiana, before being caught and returned via horse ambulance to the Ellis Park barn area, where the state veterinarian immediately began administering fluids and additional treatment.

In spite of being dehydrated and tying up, as well as missing a few shoes and grabbing a quarter, Bold and Bossy was reported by owner-trainer Michael Ann Ewing from her Lexington base to be doing well.

“She's not lame. No [broken] bones or stitches needed,” said Ewing. “Probably traumatized mentally, but she's going to be fine. We'll have our own vets check her out and monitor her, and after a few days to make sure everything is good I'll probably give her some time on the farm. But thank God she's fine.”

Trainers Wes Hawley and Jack Hancock were instrumental in catching the loose filly, who was due to make her racing debut, first trying to apprehend her in the barn area and then on the public roads. Click for a brief video of the filly's escapade taken by a driver.

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