Outrider not ready to cross Beulah finish line

Business First, November 11, 1991
By MARYELLEN O SHAUGHNESSY

P.A. "Paul" Ward has been about the business of thoroughbred horse racing for going on 41 years now.

Beulah Park bettors see him only as the outrider, a weathered, ageless man, a fixture on Yeller, his palomino pony, heading up the fall meeting post parades and getting races off at the prescribed time.

But most don't know the parts of his long and accomplished career that are hidden from a rail bird's view.

Ward is a big part of Beulah Park racing history. He spent 16 years as a jockey on the back of a dancing, race-ready thoroughbred.

Ward, 57, was one of the best race riders in the region, winning 1,650 races in his riding career. For most of a decade (1952 to 1960), he earned leading rider honors yearly at Beulah Park, an unmatched record for the 68-year-old track.

Most also don't know that after hanging up the race tack in 1968 he gained a reputation as the best outrider and morning exercise rider most backstretch folks at Beulah have ever seen.

Ward's main task at the track now is outriding - catching loose racehorses before they hurt themselves or another horse or human.

For instance, on one recent morning, Ward ran down and caught a horse whose bit had broken, leaving the rider with little more to do than just hang on and hope P.A. got him before a collision did.

A good outrider is a real asset, not found at many tracks anywhere. "Sometimes, they can't catch a cold, let alone a runaway horse,” said trainer Keith "Chief" Duffield.

Duffield particularly knows how hard an outrider's task is. He was once hired by Ward to outride in the mornings. In the fall of 1975 while trying to catch a loose horse, he crashed through the track's outside rail. The accident resulted in two dead horses and multiple injuries including a nearly fatal broken neck for Duffield.

Human talent is only half of what makes a good outrider. Ward has had the good fortune to have good "ponies," or in racetrack parlance, the "coldblooded" or non-thoroughbred horses that help out on the track. He raises, breaks and trains all his own, and prefers the quarter horse breed for intelligence, good handling and quickness. His mount on most afternoons is Yeller, a son of his favorite pony, a stud named, of course, Old Yeller. His second pony is a chunky chestnut named Badger.

Because of P.A.'s graceful appearance on horseback, it's always rather startling to see him dismounted. Strolling down the shed row of Barn 12 after training hours, he looks like a short, grinning gnome with massive, gnarled hands and forearms, with black chaps flapping on legs that walk with a bowed and bandylegged gait.

Ward's prime motivation behind his long, multifaceted career? "I just wanted to ride a horse and get paid for it." That simple task has never lost its enjoyment for him, even when the horseback hours begin to add up to 70-plus hours, seven days a week.

The end of the race riding part of Ward's career came in 1968. But it came only after 15 years of a stringent regimen that included anything a sturdy 5-foot-4-inch body could do to make the needle on the relentless and unforgiving jockey's scales read the right numbers. Probably the most innovative method he used to get down to the usual 112 to 115 pounds involved greasing his body down, donning a wet suit and turning the heat in his Cadillac on high for an hour's drive in the country.

After hanging up his racing tack, Ward sold his Indiana farm and made his home base in Central Ohio, where racing luck and local folks had been very good to him. "The people are friendlier here than other places," he said.

Ward bought a farm in Lithopolis, 20 miles from Grove City, and began the outriding/exercise riding part of his career in 1969. His services as an exercise rider were in such demand that he hired someone like Duffield to do morning outriding chores so he could turn his attention to galloping horses.

And gallop them he did, as many as 35 in four short hours. It's no easy task to get a 1,500-pound equine athlete that knows nothing but run to relax in a morning workout. P.A. took all comers, from squirrelly little 2-year-old fillies to headstrong, slightly mad stud horses that would rather paw madly at phantom enemies high in the air than put their heads down to gallop.

For Paul, they'd gallop. People would line up at the gap at the three-quarter pole-with horses tacked and ready, for a chance to get P.A. on their horses' backs.

He has always been ready to play up to credulous admirers. To one young gallop girl astonished at his talent, he bragged that his hands were insured for a million bucks with Lloyd's of London.

"Galloping, he was the best," said Fred Ford, former trainer and recent morning visitor. "I've known him since the '50s. He was the best I ever saw, and I seen some good ones."

Ward stopped galloping in the morning only three years ago, when the pain from a few broken ribs wouldn't go away.

Ward has never given a thought to leaving the track. All the 4:30 a.m. mornings, all the aches and pains from old broken bones, aren't enough to give up doing something you love for a living. "It's all worth it."

He'll be leading the post parade out at Beulah Park every racing day for another 22 years, as long as he's got a good pony. "Once I run out of horse power, it's over."

© 1991 Business First, all rights reserved. Reprinted with permission.