Diane Crump, Pioneering Female Jockey, Won 228 Races

Diane Crump, who in 1969 became the first woman to ride professionally in a horse race and a year later became the first female jockey in the Kentucky Derby, has died. She was 77. Crump, who was diagnosed in October with an aggressive form of brain cancer, died Thursday in hospice care in Winchester, Virginia, the AP reports. Crump won 228 times before her last race in 1998, a month shy of her 50th birthday and nearly 30 years after her trailblazing ride at Hialeah Park in Florida on Feb. 7, 1969. "Galloping a great racehorse gives you a powerful feeling," Crump once said, per the New York Times. "I gave all the horses I rode my heart, and they gave me theirs."

Crump was among several women to fight successfully at the time to be granted a jockey license, but they still needed a trainer willing to put them in a race and then for the race to run. Other women were thwarted when male jockeys boycotted or threatened to boycott if a woman was riding. Photos of Crump's walk to the saddling area at Hialeah show her protected by security guards as a crowd pressed in on all sides. Six of the original 12 jockeys in the race had refused to ride, Mark Shrager wrote in his biography, Diane Crump: A Horse Racing Pioneer's Life in the Saddle. Among them were future stars Angel Cordero Jr., Jorge Velasquez, and Ron Turcotte, who four years later would ride Secretariat to win the Triple Crown.

But other jockeys stepped up, and as the 12 horses made their way onto the track, the bugler skipped the traditional call to the post and instead played "Smile for Me, My Diane." Crump, on a 50-1 longshot called Bridle 'n Bit, finished 10th, but the barrier had been broken. A month later, Bridle 'n Bit gave Crump her first victory at Gulfstream Park. She again made history in 1970 by becoming the first woman to ride in the Kentucky Derby. She won the first race that day at Churchill Downs, but again her mount for the history-making race was outclassed. She finished 15th out of 17 on Fathom. It would be 14 more years before another female jockey would ride in the Derby, with only four more to follow in the decades since.

Mike Anderson, racetrack president at Churchill Downs, said in a statement that Crump, who had been riding since age 5, "was an iconic trailblazer who admirably fulfilled her childhood dreams." Chris Goodlett, of the Kentucky Derby Museum, said, "Diane Crump's name stands for courage, grit, and progress." He added: "Her determination in the face of overwhelming odds opened doors for generations of female jockeys and inspired countless others far beyond racing." After retiring from racing, Crump settled in Virginia and started a business helping people buy and sell horses. In later years, she took her therapy dogs, all Dachshunds, to visit patients in hospitals and other medical clinics.