Bias Still Pulling Reins On Female Jockeys -- It Has Been 25 Years Since Women Started Making Their Mark; There Is A Long Way To Go

LEXINGTON, Ky. - Much has changed in 25 years since one male jockey, protesting women riders, warned: "If you let one woman ride, we're all dead."

Women jockeys are now racing at nearly every track, and a few ride on the elite levels of the sport. While once only a handful of women managed to fight their way inside the riding ranks, women now make up about 10 percent of the 1,000-member Jockey's Guild.

Last year, the most successful woman jockey in history, Julie Krone, became the first female winner of a Triple Crown race when she triumphed on Colonial Affair in the Belmont Stakes.

Andrea Seefeldt won 10 stakes last season and saw her career earnings approach $7 million. She's often compared to Krone.

Yet women jockeys everywhere still tell themselves: "You've come a long way baby, but the finish line is still way out of sight."

The 10 top money-winning jockeys last year were all men. Krone probably would have joined that list if she hadn't suffered severe injuries in August that will keep her out of action until May.

Horses ridden by Krone in 1993 won $6,415,462 while the nation's top jockey, Mike Smith, won $14,024,815. The 10th leading rider, Laffit Pincay Jr., won $6,743,689. Yet Rosemary Homeister, the nearest woman in earnings to Krone, won only $1,531,017. A bias against women riding races still exists, 2 1/2 decades after a brick was hurled through the window of the women jockeys' changing room in 1969 at Miami's Tropical Park. Whoever threw the brick must not have wanted Diane Crump or Barbara Jo Rubin, or any woman rider, to feel welcome.

"There's not as much prejudice today as when Barbara Jo Rubin tried to ride (at Tropical Park in 1969)," said the state steward in Florida, former Hall of Fame jockey Walter Blum.

"But I don't think there's ever going to be a time when there'll be 50 percent men and women riders in this country," he said.

Howie Tesher, a trainer in Miami and New York, said he still sees some intolerance.

"The prejudice is still there," Tesher said. "I had an owner recently who wouldn't let me ride a woman on his horse, because he said he wouldn't be able to bet (with confidence)."

Dr. Robert Kerlan, renowned orthopedic surgeon to star jockeys and the team physician for the Los Angeles Rams and Lakers, thinks that prejudice is holding women riders back - but it is presented as concern that they're not as strong as men.

The path for female jockeys has been a rocky road littered with setbacks, insults and major injuries. The women who survived it all have been every bit as tough as the first who fought for the right to ride. The jockey who said "if you let women ride, we're all dead" was John Choquette, who was riding at Tropical Park when Crump and Rubin tried to make their debuts in the winter of 1969.

Rubin and Crump followed only months behind the effort of Penny Ann Early at Churchill Downs. Early took out a license in Kentucky and was named to ride a horse. But the race was canceled when male jockeys refused to ride. The same thing happened at Tropical Park when Rubin was named to ride in a race. Thirteen male jockeys got $100 fines for boycotting Rubin's race, which had to be canceled. Then someone hurled a brick through her changing area.

The president of the Jockey's Guild, Nick Jemas, joined the fray.

"There are 82 good reasons why men and women should not ride against each other," Jemas said. "They are the 82 jockeys who were killed in racing accidents since 1940."

Such protests were common, but didn't stop Rubin or Crump. Frustrated in Florida, Rubin went to Nassau and won a race Jan. 29. Days later, on Feb. 7, Crump became the first woman to ride in a parimutuel race in the United States when she finished 10th on Bridle 'n Bit at Hialeah, not far from Tropical Park.

Rubin returned stateside and moved with trainer Brian Webb's stable to Pimlico in Maryland, hoping to ride there. But it was at nearby Charles Town racetrack in West Virginia that Rubin made history Feb. 22, 1969, as the first woman to win a pari-mutuel race.

"I thought it was a passing fad," said Chick Lang Sr., who was general manager of Pimlico Race Course. Pimlico worried it might have to come up with money to build a women's changing room if the idea of women jockeys took hold. Lang told track executives, "Don't worry. It's a novelty. It won't last.

"I thought it was a man's game," Lang said recently. "I just didn't feel like women had the strength or ability to compete."

Now Lang says, "I'll be the first to tell you how wrong I was." Women riders, called jockettes in those days, obviously did not fade from the scene as Lang and many others predicted. Yet nearly 20 years would pass before they could transform their novelty image into a major-player role.

In the beginning, their biggest opposition was from male riders. John Giovanni, now president of the Jockey's Guild, remembers how he resisted the idea of riding with women in the 1960s.

Giovanni, who rode through 1981, has long since changed his mind. But early on "I didn't want to ride with girls," he recalled. "I said, `When they make a girl a linebacker for the Green Bay Packers then I'll ride with one."'

One reason was concern about the women's safety - and how he would look if he injured one.

"Who would want to be in a position where a girl would run up where she had no room in a race or if she couldn't control her horse?" he asked. "If it was a guy you'd shut him off and say, `See you later.' But if you did that to a girl and something happened to her, people would look at you like you were a real crumb. I didn't want to read about that in the newspaper."

More opposition came from jockeys' wives. They didn't want women and their men sharing recreation quarters off their separate dressing rooms. The wives protested that the environment would allow women riders to peek at their husbands in various states of undress.

Many trainers and racehorse owners also resisted the pioneer women riders - a fact that, even today, has not entirely been obliterated. Kathy Moore, who rides regularly in the Southwest, remembers how she was near the top of the rider standings one year at Oaklawn, when her agent told her she would be doing even better if she were a man.

Women who did manage to get mounts in the 1960s and early 1970s often were subjected to insults from fans, or demands that they retire and have babies. There were stories, too, about being goosed by trainers as they were boosted into their saddles. Women slowly chipped away at the resistance. The groundswell of acceptance began in the 1970s at small Eastern racetracks, the minor leagues of the sport. Trainers in those places began to see that eager, dedicated women were more reliable than some of the men who turned up at those places in the twilight of their careers.

Some women became legends as they broke ground at different tracks around the country, gaining footholds on higher and higher plateaus.

There was Mary Bacon, the tough-talking, flamboyant blonde who hooked up with the Jack Van Berg stable and became a success in New York. Robyn Smith also became a success in New York, riding for Alfred G. Vanderbilt.

Patti Barton forged her way in the minor leagues to become one of the top women jockeys of the 1970s. Patti Cooksey became the nation's top woman jockey in the 1980s, forging her way at the former Latonia (now Turfway Park) in Northern Kentucky near Cincinnati.

Leading the modern wave of achievement has been Julie Krone, 30, who became the first woman to win a Triple Crown race. That historic moment occurred on Colonial Affair in last year's Belmont Stakes. Krone has led the riders' standings - both men and women - at major-league tracks such as Gulfstream Park and Belmont. She is the first woman to ride five winners in a single day at Saratoga, the mecca of the sport.

Krone is not alone in reaching vistas that were unrealized for women a quarter century ago. Last year, Vickie Warhol became the first woman nominated for the prestigious George Woolf Memorial Jockey Award.

At Delaware Park last September, women rode the winners of seven consecutive races. Also last year, four more women reached the 1,000 win milestone: Lori Wydick, Warhol, Jill Jellison and Lillian Kuykendall. They joined Krone, Vicky Aragon, Barton and Cooksey at that plateau.