For most of the past 15 years, Lakeside’s Torrie Needham has spent the Kentucky Derby escorting one of the racehorses to the gate. An injury kept Needham from making the trip to Louisville last year, but this year she was back at Churchill Downs and took fourth-place Kentucky Derby finisher Instilled Regard to the gate prior to the Run for the Roses.
“It was quite an experience,” Needham said. “There was so much rain on Saturday and I hadn’t ridden in so long that I’m pretty sore, but I felt good.”
For most of the past 15 years, Lakeside’s Torrie Needham has spent the Kentucky Derby escorting one of the racehorses to the gate. An injury kept Needham from making the trip to Louisville last year, but this year she was back at Churchill Downs and took fourth-place Kentucky Derby finisher Instilled Regard to the gate prior to the Run for the Roses.
“It was quite an experience,” Needham said. “There was so much rain on Saturday and I hadn’t ridden in so long that I’m pretty sore, but I felt good.”
Needham, who was then Torrie Jones, lived in Santee during her early childhood and was in middle school when she moved to Lakeside. She started high school at El Capitan but was in tenth grade when her mother remarried and moved to Riverside. Needham was the resident manager at the Fairbanks Riding Club in Fairbanks Ranch prior to marrying her husband in 2002. She moved to the northern California town of Fortuna after her marriage.
Needham became an exercise rider for racehorses prior to her marriage and subsequently met Monnie Goetz, who lives in the Kentucky town of Mount Washington.
Torrie and Bill Needham visited Goetz in Kentucky during early May shortly after their marriage; Needham had been inactive as an exercise rider but agreed to help Goetz decorate the horses at the Kentucky Derby.
The following year Needham was asked to pace horses and take horses to the gate, and she did that every year through 2016.
During the final week of March 2017 Needham was riding a horse for the Barretts March Select 2-Year-Olds in Training Sale at Del Mar and was bucked off. A hematoma on the left side of her head kept her in the hospital for more than three weeks.
Needham watched the 2017 Kentucky Derby on television.
Goetz modified the mane design to include Needham’s name on the escorting horses and told Needham to pay attention to the ponying horses rather than the racehorses.
Needham was able to observe her name being at the Kentucky Derby even if she wasn’t.
Her presence in Northern California during the summer rather than her injury kept Needham away from last year’s Del Mar Thoroughbred Club summer meet until the final day. Needham, who takes photographs for the jockeyworld.org Website, was given photographer press credentials for the Breeders’ Cup at Del Mar in November 2017.
This year’s Barretts March Select 2-Year-Olds in Training Sale was Needham’s first time on a horse since her injury. “After I rode that horse at the two-year-old in training sale in March I knew I was okay,” she said.
Needham also rode a horse at home one day, which was her only other ride between the accident and her trip to Louisville.
The Lakeside Rodeo and the Kentucky Derby were on consecutive weekends this year.
Needham, who also takes photographs on behalf of the Lakeside Rodeo, shot the April 28 afternoon performance of the rodeo before taking a flight to Louisville the following day.
In addition to escorting the racehorses to the gate, Needham’s traditional Churchill Downs activities include preparing the flowers to decorate horses as well as placing the flowers. She also paces horses the mornings before Derby Day.
This year, she exercised horses on the Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday prior to the Kentucky Derby and also participated in Friday morning workouts before taking horses to the gate in both the Friday and Saturday races.
“I am so thrilled,” she said. “I had so much fun.”
Needham arrived at Churchill Downs between 4:00 a.m. and 4:30 a.m. on the days she exercised the horses.
During the first three days she was done by 10:00 a.m., although the day of the Kentucky Derby she returned to her temporary Kentucky home around 10:00 p.m.
Needham escorted seven horses to the gate during the Friday races. The first of those was Killay, who won the second race. Nine races later, Needham escorted favorite Midnight Bisou to the Kentucky Oaks starting gate; the racehorse finished third in the Grade 1 stakes race for three-year-old fillies, although jockey Mike Smith would win the Kentucky Derby the following day on Justify.
Churchill Downs had 14 races May 5, and Needham took horses to the gate for the final ten of those. Decoration duties for the Kentucky Derby horses precluded her from ponying horses for the first four races.
“I was putting ribbons and stuff on the horses’ manes,” she said.
The Kentucky Derby was the day’s 12th race.
Earlier in the week, Needham had been escorting Instilled Regard, and she took that horse to the gate prior to the Run for the Roses.
“They asked for the same pony to go out with their horse every day, so I kind of knew that’s who I was going to end up with,” she said.
Horseracing odds are adjusted based on betting totals to minimize the track’s stake of any specific horse winning. The morning line had 50:1 odds for Instilled Regard.
Although Needham had no expectations for Instilled Regard, rain in the absence of lightning does not cancel or postpone horse races and weather can be a factor in the race result.
Louisville International Airport recorded 3.15 inches of rain May 5, breaking the previous Kentucky Derby record of 2.31 inches set in 1918.
“It could have been anybody’s race, really,” Needham said.
The Kentucky Derby is a 1 1/4-mile race.
Instilled Regard was bumped out of the starting gate, and for the first three-quarters of a mile he was 17th among the 20 horses.
“He had kind of a bad start,” Needham said.
Jockey Drayden Van Dyke maneuvered Instilled Regard to fifth entering the stretch before gaining one additional position.
“Drayden just kind of eased him onto the rail,” Needham said. “He rode an excellent race.”
Instilled Regard was the longshot at 85.1:1 at post time. Although only bettors with a correct superfecta ticket benefitted from those odds, fourth place provided earnings of $100,000.
“He’s a very nice horse,” Needham said of Instilled Regard. “He was very nice in the mornings.”
Instilled Regard finished 4 1/4 lengths behind Justify and 2 3/4 lengths in front of fifth-place My Boy Jack, whose sire is Creative Cause.
In 2012, Needham took Creative Cause to the gate prior to the Kentucky Derby; Creative Cause finished fifth in that race, won by I’ll Have Another.
Kent Desormeaux rode My Boy Jack in the Kentucky Derby. Needham once galloped for Desormeaux at Del Mar.
Desormeaux’s brother is the trainer for My Boy Jack.
J. Keith Desormeaux trains some of his horses at the San Luis Rey Training Center in Bonsall, and My Boy Jack was a San Luis Rey horse prior to beginning his racing career. That makes My Boy Jack the first San Luis Rey horse to run in the Kentucky Derby since the December 7 fire which destroyed several San Luis Reybarns and killed more than 40 horses.
A third San Diego County entry and a second Lakeside entry also participated in the Kentucky Derby.
Mick Ruis, who owns and trains Bolt D’Oro, was raised in the Rios Canyon area of Lakeside, which is named for his great-grandfather Peter Rios, and attended El Capitan High School.
The final day of last year’s Del Mar summer meet included the Del Mar Futurity won by Bolt D’Oro, and Needham also observed last month’s Santa Anita Derby in which Bolt D’Oro finished second.
“He kind of piqued my interest,” Needham said. “He sure looked beautiful here.”
In the past, Needham and retired jockey Frankie Lovato Jr. hosted the blogtalkradio.com Jockey World show on horse racing.
Needham has worked as an exercise rider for various horse racing trainers during the Del Mar Thoroughbred Club meets including Dallas Keen, Aimee Dollase, Tom Proctor, and Richard Baltas. She does not currently have any arrangements to exercise horses at Del Mar this year.
