He Knew Right Way : Horse Got Turned Around After Spill at Fairplex, but Clark’s Risk Paid Off

Joe Clark’s job is tough enough. He doesn’t need unnecessary risks.

As one of the assistant starters on Jay Slender’s gate crew at Fairplex Park, Clark finds himself cheek to cheek with nasty, ill-behaved animals all day. So what was Clark doing out there in the middle of the track Monday afternoon, waving a rake at an oncoming field of thoroughbreds?

Saving lives.

Acting purely on instinct, Clark ended up a key player in an incident that will be remembered as another bizarre story in the colorful history of horse racing at the L.A. County Fair.

Monday’s 1 1/16-mile ninth race began innocently enough. The field of 10 maiden claimers broke cleanly from the far end of the backstretch, starting their scheduled journey of about 1 1/2 laps around the five-furlong oval.

As the field angled around the first of three turns, there was commotion at the back. Halo’s Bring Roses, a longshot ridden by Enrique Munoz, had run up on the heels of Prince Killany. Halo’s Bring Roses stumbled badly, lurching to his right and into the hind legs of Junior Bill, ridden by veteran Alex Fernandez.

“I saw it coming,” Fernandez said Tuesday as he lay on the masseur’s table in the jockeys’ room, aching from his spill. “And I thought I was OK. Then all of a sudden my horse goes out from under me.”

Fernandez landed hard. His helmet jammed into his forehead and scraped the bridge of his nose. He feared for a moment that he had re-injured the vertebrae he had broken a few years earlier.

“I felt dizzy,” Fernandez said. “I didn’t want to get up. But I knew the horses would be coming around again. So I crawled down the track and under the rail to wait for the ambulance. I didn’t know what happened until I saw the races on TV that night.”

As it turned out, the spill was only the start of the drama. After throwing Fernandez, Junior Bill regained his stride and chased after the field. But Halo’s Bring Roses actually fell, and by the time he got up the pack was long gone. He turned east and headed the wrong way up the backstretch, toward the starting gate.

Clark and others in the gate crew were raking over the wheel tracks left by the starting gate when they heard announcer Trevor Denman call the spill.

“As soon as I saw the loose horse, I knew there was going to be a wreck,” Clark said. “I could just feel it.”

The jockeys, at the opposite end of the course, were oblivious. They barreled past the stands and headed into the clubhouse turn as if nothing had happened. And Denman, focused on the race, did not see Halo’s Bring Roses running the wrong way. Standing at the edge of the six-furlong chute, the gate crew had the best view of impending doom.

That’s when Clark went into action. Positioning himself in the middle of the track--very much in harm’s way--he began waving his rake and screaming, “Loose horse! Loose horse!”

“I was trying to tip them off that they were heading for a bad situation,” Clark said. “You’ve just got to react. I’ve seen horses kill people before, deader than a doornail.”

As the riders approached the rake-brandishing Clark, jockey Galen Mitchell didn’t know what to think. He was aboard Sefton’s Cookie, leading at the time.

“I thought maybe they couldn’t get the starting gate moved,” Mitchell said. “I’ve seen that happen before.

“Then I saw the loose horse. There wasn’t much time to think. I wanted to get control of my horse and get him out of there before he saw the loose horse and really spooked.”

Mitchell reined up and steered his horse to the right. That left Paul Atkinson, running second on Sun Discovery, fully exposed to Halo’s Bring Roses. Atkinson had to play “chicken” with the terrified thoroughbred coming right at him.

“I remember waiting for him to tilt his head a little to the outside,” Atkinson said. “Then I slapped my horse on the shoulder and sent him. Figured I’d either get by him quick enough or hit him. And if we hit it wasn’t going to matter if I was going a little bit faster.

“I could have reached out and probably touched him,” Atkinson added. “It was pretty close.”

The close call with Sun Discovery helped slow Halo’s Bring Roses, and the rest of the riders got their mounts out of the way. There was one last near-collision at the rear of the field when apprentice Todd Mongenel and his mount, Buck Tudor, came face to face with the runaway.

And there was still Joe Clark, trapped in heavy traffic with only a rake.

“I heard one guy yell, ‘Get out of the way!’ ” Clark said. “And then he rode behind me.”

For all the excitement, there was very little damage. Munoz was hospitalized briefly and released with cuts and bruises. Fernandez was back in action Tuesday. And the horses apparently suffered only minor damage.

The race was declared “no contest,” which rendered it moot in most of the betting pools and in purse distribution. The riders received only the minimum mount fee of $50.

“I once heard somebody say that jockeys were overpaid,” Mitchell said, shaking his head.

“Well, most of the time the job isn’t all that hard. But all it takes is that one time, and it’s all over. This time we were lucky.”