Sunday, Sep 7, 2008
That marked the year her parents divorced, but another 1978 event seems to have had a more lasting effect on Krone: Steve Cauthen, 18, won the Triple Crown on Affirmed. The jockey became her hero and she quickly read Pete Axthelm's Cauthen biography, "The Kid." She decided then to be a jockey.
"He was my inspiration," she has said. "I read his story and thought, 'If he could overcome all the difficulties, so could I.'"
The next year, though, her sophomore year in high school, she was invited to join a traveling circus as a trick rider and nearly did. At the last minute, she decided she didn't trust the guy running the show and went back to her jockey dream. When the school term ended she went to Churchill Downs, with no sleep and a forged birth certificate in hand.
She stayed for three months, earning $50 a week and living with an older trainer. The following summer, she raced in Michigan, Ohio and Illinois. Krone made it halfway through her senior year of high school before she felt the need to split again. Much to her teacher dad's consternation, she dropped out of school and headed to Tampa Bay, Fla., to live with her grandparents and work as an exercise rider and apprentice jockey at Tampa Bay Downs. But the guards wouldn't even let her through the front gate. So she and her mother walked down the length of fence and then climbed it. They started toward the barns only to be picked up by a woman who thought she had found a lost little girl and her confused mother.
The woman took Krone to her boyfriend, Jerry Pace, a trainer. "So," he said, "I'm told you want to be a jockey."
"No," Krone said, "I'm gonna be a jockey."
Pace took her out and let her ride, thinking he was merely humoring her. Five weeks later, in February 1981, she sat atop Lord Farkle in the winner's circle.
She began working her way up, battling fellow jockeys and winning lots of races. Most horse owners and trainers wanted nothing to do with a "jockette." She told USA Today this year, "I learned how to climb into people's hearts like you can't believe. I worked so hard to -- we will loosely use the term -- 'seduce' people."
Her seductions may have included the free doughnuts she was handing out or her bone-crushing handshake. Maryland horse trainer Ben Perkins Jr. told the New York Times about meeting Krone for the first time, at his barn in Atlantic City, N.J., in 1981: "This cute little girl, looks about 10, comes up to me and squeaks, 'Hi! I'm Julie Krone! I'm a jockey!' and takes my hand and brings me to my knees. Well, we let her ride, and she rides like a god."
More and more trainers started accepting the fact that Krone, despite her sex, could get the job done. "The perfect thing," Perkins continued, "would be this little small person who could just sit on the horse's back and go along for the ride, just to keep the horse out of trouble. That was Julie."
She could coax horses to win instead of pushing them. Trainers often spoke of her patience and her hands, which seemed to guide the horse to victory, no matter the odds. But she wasn't necessarily a gentle rider and, when necessary, she wasn't a gentle person.
In 1982, Yves Turcotte smacked her horse with his whip during a race and, when the race was over, Krone shoved him off the weigh-out scales. Jockey Jake Nied wrestled with her after a match until others pulled them apart. In 1986, Miguel Rujano hit her in the ear with his whip and she punched him in the face. He pushed her into the jockeys' swimming pool and she hit him with a lawn chair. In 1989, she exchanged blows with jockey Joe Bravo and left him with fewer teeth. She was fined for these infractions, but they gained her much respect.
That wild streak spilled over to her personal life. She drove a red Porsche with a wooden block on the accelerator so her short legs could stomp the pedal all the way down. In 1983, when she was racing at Pimlico Race Course in Maryland, authorities found marijuana in her car, a habit she had picked up when she was 12. According to Sports Illustrated, she was lucky they didn't find cocaine.
Krone attended a drug-rehab class and urinated into a jar once a week for the next year. But the most brutal punishment was the 60-day suspension. It was the first time in her life that she couldn't ride. It drove her crazy. She went to the racetrack and stood outside the fence. She went clean.
Upon her return, she continued to steamroll through boundaries (1987: first woman to win a riding title at a major track; 1992: first woman to ride in the Kentucky Derby; one of only a handful of American riders to win six races in one day) and victory tape. In the 1980s, she won 1,898 races. In 1986, her mother was diagnosed with cancer and Krone asked her what she could do for her. In a moment straight out of "Rocky," Judi Krone told her daughter that all she could do was win. And so she did.
In 1993, she reached her peak. She became the first woman to win a Triple Crown event, the 125-year-old Belmont Stakes, astride 13-to-1 long-shot Colonial Affair. She was named the person of the week by ABC News. ESPN gave her an Espy award as 1993's top female athlete. Krone was on top of the world.
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