Jockey Ouzts joins 6,000-win club

Veteran jockey Perry Ouzts celebrates his milestone win with the rest of the Turfway riding colony (Pat Lang Photography) Jockey Perry Ouzts joined an elite group of riders Saturday when he rode Tanner Me Boy to a two-length victory in Turfway Park’s 2ND race to notch his 6,000th career win. Only 16 other jockeys in history have reached that memorable milestone. “You don’t think about it during the race,” Ouzts said after the celebration with friends and family in the winner’s circle. “You just concentrate and see how you can get (the horse) home. But once I crossed that finish line it was like getting a 6,000-pound monkey off my back. “When you’re sitting in the gate, you don’t think about nothing but the race, and the best way you can get him home. That’s how you block out all the fear — everything. It’s tunnel vision. You don’t think about anything else.” Asked about the determination to reach 6,000 wins race by race, day by day, Ouzts said, “You just show up to work every day, and you hope it’s a good day.”

Ouzts, 58, currently ranks 17th in career wins. Immediately ahead of him with
6,032 wins is Hall of Fame jockey Johnny Longden, who rode from 1927 through the
mid-1960s and was the first to hit the 6,000 mark. Of those ahead of Ouzts in
career wins, all but four are in the Hall of Fame, and only four — Mario Pino
and Hall of Famers Russell Baze and Edgar Prado — are still active.

Ouzts grew up in Rivervale, Arkansas, riding horses with Hall of Fame jockey
Earlie Fires, his cousin. He won his first race in 1973 at Beulah Park aboard a
horse named Rablu and has been a consistent leader on the Ohio circuit, holding
a record 24 meet titles from River Downs and at least 11 from Beulah Park. He
also owns one riding title from Turfway.

Ouzts names the racemare Hy Carol as his favorite mount of all time. The two
won 24 races together, including nine stakes from 1976 to 1978, and no other
rider ever won with her. Another memorable win was the inaugural running of the
Mike Rowland Memorial Handicap at Thistledown in 2004. The race is named for
Ouzts’s fellow jockey and long-time friend who died from injuries sustained
during a race at Turfway in February 2004.

A solid, consistent rider, Ouzts also has 5,731 seconds, and 5,514 thirds. He
has ridden in 44,741 races as of this writing and has earned purses totaling
$35,786,244.

Breaking from post two, Ouzts brought Tanner Me Boy from off the pace to
finish the 5 1/2-furlong race in 1:05 1/5. Tanner Me Boy is owned by Thomas
McCann and trained by Doug Cowans.

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