DEL MAR PICKS

Making a career riding horses can be difficult. Aside from the physical wear and tear on your body there are not a lot of good paying horse riding jobs out there. The lack of opportunity wrapped around the early morning hours combined with the demand on one’s body prompts most people to bail on a career riding horses and look elsewhere for employment.

But there are people out there with an intense love of horses who are not afraid of a little hard work, and for those who stick with it, who don’t mind the seven-day work weeks and 3 a.m. wake up calls, good things can happen. Take for instance Torrie Needham of Lakeside, California. Her devotion to horses led to the ultimate reward during this past Breeders’ Cup. 

The story actually starts last spring when Needham was coaxed into flying out from her home to Louisville, Kentucky to help exercise and pony horses during Derby week. She had been doing it for years, but had recently decided to retire. 

“In Kentucky, I have a dear friend, Monnie Goetz, who runs a pony business,” Needham says. “She rides the great big, huge (pony horse) Harley (at Churchill Downs). I met her in Hot Springs when I was still working. When I quit the racetrack I came back from the Midwest and I was running the Fairbanks Riding Club as the resident manager there in Rancho Santa Fe.”

One day Monnie calls and invites Torrie and her husband to come out to Louisville for the week of the Kentucky Derby.

”We stayed with her and went to the races,” Needham remembers. “I went back again the next year but this time she asked if I wanted to help her pony. Twenty years later I’m still ponying for her. I go back every year only for the week of the Derby.” 

But this year Torrie wasn’t planning on making the trip. 

“I thought I was too old and kind of done,” Needham admits. “My body’s sore but she (Monnie) said ‘You have to come. It’s the 150th running.’ 

Goetz pony’s all of trainer Kenny McPeek’s horses so Torrie was going out with most of McPeek’s horses in the mornings leading up to the Derby. On Kentucky Oaks Friday, she got put on McPeek’s horses in the afternoon when they raced. She took Thorpedo Anna to the gate for the Oaks and the filly won. Exciting for Needham, but she had taken winners of the Oaks to the gate before. It was the next day that sent Torrie over the top. She took Mystik Dan to the gate for the Derby. After 20 years it was the first time she had ponied the Derby winner. 

“I was speechless,” Needham remembers. “What a thrill that was. All these years of going back there I’d been close. I’ve taken seconds and thirds but never won it.” 

Now fast forward six months to Del Mar and the Breeders’ Cup, right here in Needham’s own backyard. 

“It was an accident,” Needham states. “Somebody brought a pony in for Cindy (Ellet, who runs her own pony business here in Southern California). Cindy says ‘I know someone who would be great help for you.’ She calls me up and I told her I’d help her out. I was there (at Del Mar) Monday morning and McPeek calls Cindy and says he needs a pony at 5:30. I wasn’t going to start until seven o’clock but Cindy says ‘I’ll just send Torrie over to you. She took your filly to the gate in the Oaks. She knows her.’” 

So, there’s Torrie again ponying Thorpedo Anna as the filly prepares for another big race. 

“I didn’t know I was going to take her in the race until we started walking over there to wait for them to come out on the track,” Needham notes. “Every time I’d ever taken her she’s been perfect. She’s been nice and quiet. She’s very strong to gallop and some horses get very strong with you, even with the pony. But she’s just sweet.”

‘The Grizzly’, as McPeek fondly calls Thorpedo Anna, went on to crush ‘em in the Breeders’ Cup Distaff. Now Torrie is wondering if she may have been ponying the future Horse of the Year.

“I hope she is,” Needham says. “She’s been all over the place and won on a lot of different tracks. It gives me chills just thinking about it.” 

Torrie Needham was born in La Mesa in 1958. Her father was a bull-dogger, or steer wrestler, in the rodeo. Her mom was a meat wrapper at a grocery store. For the most part, she was raised in San Diego and went to El Capitan High School in Lakeside. When her mom remarried, they moved up to Riverside County. That’s where she would get her start.

“My love affair with horses began when I was born,” Needham insists. “Since my dad was in the rodeo we had horses my whole life. My dad rodeoed out of Lakeside but he was gone most of the year because he had a world champion steer wrestling horse.”

Steer wrestling is an event in which there’s a horse on the left, a horse on the right and a steer in the middle. At full gallop, the guy on the left jumps off onto the steer and then twists him to the ground. It’s takes a tough man to succeed at this sport but Torrie’s dad, C. L. Jones, was the image of a tough man. Literally. All through the 1970s, he was the Marlboro Man in those print and television commercials.

“I never thought of him as the Marlboro Man,” Needham says with a smile. “My dad got on the screen actors guild and made a lot of print ads. I’d be going somewhere and see him on a billboard. He made a lot of commercials that ran on TV, too. One ran during the Super Bowl. It was a Volvo truck commercial. That’s my favorite.

“He and I went to Arizona to work on a movie,” Needham continues. “It was called ‘Junior Bonner’ with Steve McQueen. It was a rodeo picture made in Prescott.” 

Her dad went to the national finals rodeo twice but never won it. He tore up his knee at the N-F-R the second time he went so he didn’t even get to finish. But his bull-doggin’ horse won the championship many times. Torrie, who had been showing horses since she was about 8- or 9-years-old, once got to show her dad’s world champion steer wrestling horse. 

“The first time I ever won a class was on Peanuts,” Needham says of her dad’s horse. “His real name was ‘Make It Do.’ He ran at Los Alamitos and Bay Meadows. My dad turned him into a bulldoggin’ horse. He was just a nice horse. You could do anything with him.” 

Torrie showed horses until she was 18 and out of age groups. 

“I showed ‘Western,’ which involved western pleasure, western equitation,” she states. “I showed trail and showmanship-at-hand for halter horses. My favorite horse was an old roping horse named Cowboy that we made into a show horse and we did pretty well.” 

It was her mom, though, who got her started in horse racing. She introduced Torrie to a guy who asked if she wanted to learn to gallop horses. 

“My first boyfriend was trainer R. L. Wheeler’s grandson, Sam,” Needham remarks. “He was just retiring from riding races because he was getting too big. He gave me a helmet and a whip and I started getting on horses.” 

She would just show up at Pomona and walk around the barns until somebody put her on a horse. 

“I was 18,” Torrie states. “I did that for about a month and then Sam’s grandfather called me and asked if I wanted to go to Hollywood Park and learn to gallop the babies. I took that job and worked for him for two years.”

R.L. (Robert) Wheeler was one of the most successful trainers on the West Coast. His career spanned 50 years. He got his big break when New York owner C.V. Whitney was looking to send a string of horses out west and chose Wheeler to train them for him.

Torrie would pony and exercise horses for Wheeler. Ponying a horse involves riding a pony alongside the racehorse on its way to the gate or as it prepares to work. The pony comforts the high-strung Thoroughbred while also acting as a guide, showing the racehorse where and when to go. 

Some trainers have their own people to ride their own ponies and Torrie would mostly pony for the trainer she was working for. She would take all of their horses to the gate. For those who don’t have their own people to pony their horses, there are people like Cindy Ellet. Her business provides trainers with ponies and riders. 

There are also the freelancers.

“They own their own pony and ride them and take care of them,” Needham notes. “A lot of the pony people you see on the track at Del Mar are freelancers.” 

Exercising a horse actually involves climbing aboard the racehorse and galloping, breezing and maybe even working the animal.

“I’ve just been blessed my whole career,” Needham recalls. “I got to work for all of the best trainers. After Bob Wheeler, I worked for Eddie Gregson and he sent me up north to Bay Meadows and Golden Gate. But I kept coming down with tonsillitis. It was just too damp up there. I had to come back down here and I got a job with (Hall of Fame trainer) Laz Barrera ponying horses at Del Mar and Hollywood Park. I was with him for eight years. We went to New York every summer for four years.”

It was there she got to pony the great John Henry, taking him to the gate twice at Belmont Park.

After Barrera, Torrie worked for trainers Jude Feld and D. Wayne Lukas who took her to Hot Springs, Arkansas and then to Kentucky and Louisiana where she worked for Troy Young and became an assistant trainer. 

“I was still galloping but no ponying,” Needham says. “Then I worked for Tom Amoss and Steve Asmussen. I was so lucky to work for the people that I did.” 

Most everyone who has climbed on the back of a horse will tell you it’s a thrill. But riding an old trail horse out in Descanso is quite different from riding a Thoroughbred at Del Mar. You need a lot of strength and endurance to ride these horses. 

“A mile is not that far but it is a long way on a horse,” Needham points out. “When you’re galloping, they can get really tough. They pull on you. You just do the best you can. I took Frankie Dettori to the gate in one of the Breeders’ Cup races and his horse had no mouth at all. He was pulling both of us every step of the way until somebody came and took him out of my hands. I was riding this nice roan pony and he was very good with the tough horse. Even Dettori said his arms were getting tired before the race even started. 

“It took me two years to get to where I was comfortable and wasn’t sore all the time,” Needham continues. “You’re whole body goes through a lot trying to get fit. I never exercised or stretched because I was ponying and galloping in the mornings. I didn’t have time (to workout). But you get pretty fit and muscular when you’re riding every day.”

It's that power that attracted Torrie to horses in the first place.

“The power and just the horses themselves,” she says. “They’re majestic.”

Torrie will be the first to tell you she’s been thrown off a lot of horses in her lifetime, but she’s been fortunate to only suffer a couple of serious injuries.

“A bandage on my horse’s leg came unwound and he stepped on it with his hind leg,” Needham recalls. “Down he went and down I went, too. I had a separated shoulder. Doctors had to cut off the end of my collarbone because something was catching on it. I haven’t had a problem with it since. 

“Then about seven or eight years ago I was ponying at a horse sale at Del Mar,” Needham continued. “I got on this pony and was warming him up in the chute. It was (early in the morning and) still dark and there were no lights or anything. He spooked and I spurred him right out from under me. I ended up cutting my head open and I had a hematoma in my head. They had to shave all my hair off.”  

Her golden locks have grown back since and now Needham sports hair that falls well past her shoulders. She’s retired now with her husband, William, who was a structural steel contractor and fabricator. They’ve been married for 22 years. He has a daughter who lives in New Mexico. 

In the past she’s done photography for Jockey World and has written articles on exercise riding for people who are interested in becoming a jockey or exercise rider. Needham even co-hosted a podcast with Eclipse Award winning jockey Frankie Lovato, the inventor of the Equiciser.

“I live across from a show arena,” Needham says, “and I show my little 17-year-old mare that we bred and raised. I just take her across the street and show her just for fun.” 

And that’s sort of the bottom line with people who ride horses for a living. It’s fun. The exhilaration one feels when they first climb up on a horse may dull over years and years of riding. But then you experience the ultimate ride and you’re hooked all over again.

“I can remember galloping a horse,” Torrie states. “His name was Danebo. We were at Santa Anita. Very few horses, if any, have done this to me. When he galloped it felt so good that I just got chills after he pulled up. 

“One other horse did that to me,” Needham adds. “His name was Mountain Cat for D. Wayne Lukas. He was a 2-year-old with a troubled past and he just went out there and put in the perfect gallop. I shouldn’t say this but it’s even better than sex. There’s just nothing like it. It’s a feeling of grandeur. It doesn’t happen very often. Horses have problems or you have a problem or you’re hurting. But when it all comes together, it’s heaven.”