Breeders’ Cup Classic Six-Furlong Time Adjusted

Saturday's GI Longines Breeders' Cup Classic won by Flightline (Tapit) has officially had its six-furlong split adjusted to a corrected time of 1:09.27 after the sensor was tripped early by an outrider heading to assist Epicenter (Not This Time), who was pulled up on the Keeneland backstretch with a condylar fracture to his right front.

The official statement, jointly released by Equibase and Keeneland, reads as follows:

During the running of the GI Longines Breeders' Cup Classic on Nov. 5, 2022, at Keeneland, the timing eye for the three-quarter fraction was inadvertently tripped by an outrider as he was making his way to tend to pulled-up Epicenter. A back-up time of 1:09.62 was produced on race day for that fraction. As per Equibase policy, the fractional time underwent comprehensive video review to verify its accuracy. After this review, it was determined that the three-quarter fractional time for the Classic was 1:09.27. No other times were affected, including the final time of 2:00.05.

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Breeders’ Cup Presents Connections: ‘Good Cowboys’ Let Actions Speak Louder Than Words

Real cowboys don't walk around calling themselves cowboys. You'll know you've met one when you come across an individual with an intuitive understanding of horses, who probably doesn't say very much, and who has earned the respect of everyone around them.

By all accounts, outrider Mike Chambless is as good a cowboy as they come. The 66-year-old earned the respect of every trainer, exercise rider, and pony person at Gulfstream Park during his tenure at the South Florida racetrack.

“I'm not that good at standing there talking to people, dealing with different mentalities and personalities,” Chambless said. “The horses are what I thrive on, and I'm only as good as the horse I'm sitting on.”

The Saturday of the Florida Derby, on April 3, was Chambless' last day at Gulfstream, and photographer Gwen Davis captured a powerful image of him during that afternoon's races that made the rounds on social media the next day. 

It shows Chambless leaning against his horse, head bowed, drawing strength from a moment of solitude before climbing back into the saddle to finish out the day's card. 

The moment was an emotional one, Chambless admitted. He had been experiencing severe back pain that afternoon (outriding isn't for the faint of heart), and it was also the last time he'd have a chance to ride the horse, Otis.

Chambless is stepping down from his post at Gulfstream to head home to the West Coast in order to help take care of his family. He'd sold his two outriding horses to a local hunter/jumper trainer in Florida, taking advantage of the opportunity to find them a great home after they'd worked hard for him for several years.

“The chance came up to sell them both at the same time, and it was to a gal I'd known since high school,” Chambless explained. “It was about time for a break.”

Otis made about $60,000 as a racehorse, and first came to Chambless about three years ago. The big gelding is kind and effective as an outriding horse, Chambless said, but just didn't have the early speed of his other horse, a little gray named Zeck. 

Zeck was also the more difficult of the pair.

A sunrise over Gulfstream Park, as seen from the back of Zeck

“The owner that had him, that guy warned me, 'He'll bite your head off,'” Chambless remembered. “Well, I've been bit and I've been kicked, that's no problem. I ended up giving $500 for him. I didn't ride him for 30 days because I wanted him to change mentally. The first time I got on him he bucked the entire length of the racetrack. But that's okay.

“I started riding him to give him the confidence he needed in the mornings, hazing horses that were pulling up from their gallops, off the right, off the left. Letting him run up to the horse, and before he even gets to his head I've got him caught; it's all about the timing.

“Now when I'd go to get on him at 5:15 in the morning, he is like riding a freaking rabbit. He will hear a cricket fart in China, I kid you not. So I might not like him very much for 23 hours and 55 minutes of the day, but during that time when I really need him? That's when he shined.”

Chambless' patience stems from a childhood watching every move of his father, a Quarter Horse trainer. By the the time he was six, his dad would put him atop the pony every morning, hand him a racehorse on each side, and have Chambless leading them around at the walk to cool them out after training. 

“When we were done, he'd pull the stock saddle off the pony, put a flat saddle on, and he never saw me again til feed time,” said Chambless. “My friends and I would ride all around the hills of Ruidoso. If I fell off, that pony would go right back to his stall at the barn, so I would just head back there, climb up on the fence, get back on and head out again.”

Watching his father interact with both his horses and other horsemen had a profound influence on Chambless throughout his life with horses.

“I was fortunate that growing up I was surrounded by good people that my dad had earned their respect, who could help open some doors for me,” he said. “My dad, he ran with good hands and good cowboys. All that adds up to me being fortunate to have had some decent and good horses that I enjoyed being on, and always treating people with some respect.”

In typical cowboy fashion, that respect seems to always go both ways.

“There wasn't anyone here that did not have great respect for him,” said Gulfstream-based trainer Lillian Klesaris.

While both his mind and his body are ready for a sabbatical from the racetrack, Chambless definitely hasn't seen the last of early-morning sunrises over a dirt oval. He may not be sure exactly where he'll end up next, but this cowboy won't stay away for long.

“A good catch horse can come from anywhere, but it's hard to find good outriders,” said Chambless. “I've been fortunate to ride with some good hands. If you can get a couple of good outriders together, then you can get the confidence of the trainers on your side. I think that's the biggest thing.”

Outrider Mike Chambless and “Otis” make a difficult left-handed catch on the Gulfstream Park turf course

 

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Breeders’ Cup Presents Connections: ‘I Want To Be Somebody Who Lifts People Up’

As the “policemen” of the track, outriders have to command the respect of exercise riders and backstretch workers alike in order to be effective at their jobs. Most tend to utilize a tough guy type of attitude on the job, but Oaklawn outrider Chisum Ewing prefers more of a “lead by example” approach. His voice is quiet and calm, but it has an authority in it that can't be denied. His instructions or corrections are always delivered with the same respect he expects in return.

Admittedly, the 32-year-old native of Hot Springs, Ark. used to have a reputation as a “hard a**” on the track and as a “party guy” during his off hours, but that all changed in 2017 when tragedy altered the course of Ewing's life forever.

After the Oaklawn Park meet ended in April that year, Ewing underwent shoulder surgery and needed six months off to recover.

“I've been on the racetrack my whole life; I didn't know what it was like to be off the track,” Ewing said. “There's not a lot of work to be had for the kind of wages I was making on the track, and that was kind of disheartening to me. I mean, I couldn't get a job waiting tables. I thought, 'I'm not even good enough to wait tables, are you kidding me?'”

The hits kept coming.

“I felt kind of lost,” Ewing continued. “Even though I have a lot of faith, I got into this depressive state. My best friend was living with me at the time, and I came home one day and caught him trying to commit suicide. I told him, 'We're still friends, but I need you to move out because I can't be around that kind of energy.' He begged me to let him stay, but I had to ask him to leave the house.

“Then, later on that evening, he killed himself. I really, really took that hard. Through that time, I was just here. I had no money, I'd depleted everything from six months off. I'm just trying to figure out all this stuff at once, past history all crashing down on me.”

He started attending a local church, Encounter, but just going once a week and immediately leaving after the service wasn't enough.

Ewing distinctly remembers one afternoon sitting on the bathroom floor in his house, struggling with suicidal thoughts of his own. He looked up and saw a cobweb under the medicine cabinet, and it made him angry. He got up and knocked it down.

The next day, Ewing found himself in the very same place, hearing those same negative thoughts echoing through his brain.

“I looked up, and I saw a spider rebuilding that web,” Ewing said. “I thought about knocking it down again, but I ended up sitting there and just watching for a while. I'm watching this spider, and I hear, as clear as I'm talking to you, 'You see that spider?' I said, 'Yeah.' And the voice said, 'Do you see what he's doing?' I said, 'Yeah.' The voice explained, 'He's not worried about what he's going to eat, where his next meal is coming from, he's just meticulously working on that web, doing what he's been created to do. He knows if he works at it hard enough and long enough, he's going to catch something.'”

It was so simple, a spider building a web, but the message was enough to silence Ewing's negative thoughts, at least for that day. The very next afternoon, he heard about a last-minute mission trip to Honduras with Encounter Church, and Ewing knew he had to go. The only problem was the cost: $2,400.

Ewing started selling off everything he could think of, but he was still a bit short at the deadline.

“This couple I met at the church, she just sold her wedding ring and handed me the cash,” said Ewing. “To have that kind of love from a stranger, when they don't even really know you, that struck me in such a way… it made a lasting impression for the rest of my life. My family situation isn't really that great, so to have a stranger have that much confidence in me, I was just blown away.”

Chisum Ewing, far left, takes a selfie with kids during his first mission trip to Honduras

That trip to Honduras helped Ewing turn his personal tragedy into a calling to help others. Through all the amazing experiences, one event really stuck out. It involved taking big, yellow pieces of posterboard to schools, on which the kids were supposed to write their dreams.

One child asked, via interpreter, why Ewing didn't write his own dream on the board.

“At first I kind of laughed it off,” Ewing said. “Then I wrote down, 'I want to be used as a light, to show others the way.' You know, there's other things that I'd like to do, but no matter where I am, that's my biggest goal.

“I want to show somebody love or kindness that maybe hadn't ever been shown it. I want to make a mark in this world, not to be famous myself, but to make God famous. Everybody always puts people down; I want to be somebody who lifts people up.”

When he got home to Hot Springs, Ewing began to see things he'd never taken the time to notice before.

“Hot Springs has a massive homelessness problem,” Ewing said. “Being on the racetrack, you sometimes don't realize the rest of the world. I didn't realize that human trafficking is a thing in Arkansas. I didn't realize so many parents were pimping their children out, that so many children were abused… There's a city 2 ½ hours away from here that sends their homeless here on a bus, so that their city doesn't have a homelessness problem.”

Ewing started a new routine: multiple days a week, he would purchase sandwich makings at the grocery store and pass them out to the city's homeless population. A few friends from the church began to volunteer their time to help him, and now, through partnerships with a couple other organizations, the group he started feeds hundreds of people each day.

Chisum Ewing, right, takes a moment to pray with a man in Hot Springs

“I've heard so many amazing stories,” said Ewing. “There was a lady one time who walked out of the store with groceries in her hands. She came up and wanted food. She was mad and cussing me, because another guy just took the last plate, but then he gave her his food. I told him, 'Look man, I'm really sorry, but I don't have anything else.' He said, 'Dude, I'm fine. I'm not worried about my next meal. I wake up and hope that everyone can be as blessed as I am.'

“I sat on a bench for two hours that day, thinking that even though he has nothing, just look at this man. In his heart, he's got it figured out because he knows how to love people. That's really giving. That's when it really struck me, if you reach out and help somebody, not only are you seeing them prosper, they've been touched in such a way that they also want to help people.”

Ewing's future goal is to build a facility near Hot Springs to break young horses, employing kids and young adults who might not otherwise be given a second chance. It'd be almost like a halfway house, he explained.

“If I can teach them a trade, maybe they can pull themselves up and have a chance to succeed in life,” Ewing said. “I'm working to learn more about the system here, so that I know how to work within it when the financials are ready to make this dream a reality.”

He hopes the farm can also run cattle, enough to continue his mission work of feeding those who are hungry. Though Ewing is incredibly pleased with the progress he and his church have made in feeding the homeless population in Hot Springs, he knows there is more work to be done. Still, he hasn't given the operation a name or an official non-profit status.

“I'm not trying to draw attention to myself – I'm not wanting to benefit,” Ewing explained. “I understand the need to advertise and all that, but that makes it about the people, and not the service. I just want everybody else to see how good God is. I want everyone to have an understanding and appreciation for what He can do in your life if you allow Him to.”

Ewing's new perspective has extended to his job on the racetrack, as well. He recalls one morning in particular at Oaklawn, when he was outriding and saw Hall of Fame trainer D. Wayne Lukas out on the track on his pony. Ewing suddenly felt moved to ride over and pray with Lukas.

“At first he was telling me he was busy, but I've learned to listen to that feeling inside me,” Ewing said. “I could tell he received it because he was just kind of speechless, and he sat there the rest of the morning just talking to me, not about the horse or racing or anything, but about life.”

Ten days later, Lukas rode over to Ewing in the morning with a big small and a bright light shining in his eyes. Lukas relayed that he and his wife had been driving around Hot Springs when he saw an amputee standing on a street corner with his dog. Lukas wanted to stop, but his wife was driving and laughed off his request.

Lukas said they didn't get more than a mile down the road before he asked his wife to turn the car around.

“I don't know what Wayne gave him or did for him, but it doesn't matter,” Ewing said. “Wayne told me that as much as he's won on the track, he'd never won that big in life. This is a Hall of Fame trainer; he's won Derbies! But the joy that was on his face, and the fulfillment he got that he expressed to me, that's what really makes me feel like I'm succeeding in life.”

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