Jockey Julie Krone More Than Holds Own on Track

Julie Krone: I weigh 100 pounds, soaking wet.

David Letterman: I’d like to see that.

Krone: People look up to you when you win a lot of races.

Letterman: So to speak.

--”Late Night with David Letterman”

All right, so Julie Krone was David Letterman’s willing foil for the better part of 10 minutes on his television show recently.

But Krone, the 4-foot 10 1/2-inch Munchkin in silks, is so full of joie de vivre these days, that even playing straight man to Letterman is serendipity.

“That night was one of my lifetime highs,” Krone said.

Setting up Letterman with punch lines?

“No, meeting Chevy Chase in the green room before the show.”

Since last summer at Monmouth Park, the punch has belonged to the 1,000-pound horses that the 24-year-old, seemingly overmatched Krone has been riding in New Jersey and New York. She was the leading rider at both Monmouth and the Meadowlands--the first time a female jockey had ever led two major tracks in the same year--and until a seven-day suspension for careless riding slowed her down here last week, she was close to the top of this season’s Aqueduct standings.

It took Patti Barton, one of the first female jockeys, almost 15 years to win 1,202 races, and now Patti Cooksey and Krone are both about to break her record. Cooksey, who has been riding since 1979, is only a few wins away, and Krone, who began in 1980, needs about 25 wins. Barton is now retired.

Most of Barton’s wins came in the hinterlands, and Cooksey’s career has been largely restricted to small tracks in the Midwest. Krone, on the other hand, has been competing on larger circuits in Florida and Maryland for several years, and the 1987 geyser in New Jersey landed her in New York, where many of the prominent owners are hidebound establishmentarians, and where the jockeys’ room is full of hard-bitten male riders.

If a female rider said something like, “We’ve come a long way, baby,” at Aqueduct, she would be hard-pressed to find a chorus. Right now, Kim Doran is the only female rider besides Krone competing here.

“Julie winning four races in one day at Aqueduct late last year was an unheard-of occurrence,” says Sam Renick, a former jockey. “If you asked horsemen five years ago about the chance of that happening, I’ll bet that 95% of them would have said that there was no way.”

Krone is getting weary of the male-female angle in the line of questioning, but it was the obvious area for Sports Illustrated, Newsweek and “Good Morning America” to pursue when they interviewed her. Breaking in during the early 1970s, Barton tried to discourage that tangent by saying, “Don’t call me a jockette, I’m just a race rider,” and Krone feels the same way.

Sometimes, though, it is other jockeys who won’t let the Bartons and the Krones forget the gender thing. Several years ago, Barton was so graphic in telling Johnny Carson about a post-race scuffle with a male jockey that the television host flipped his pencil and wiped his eyes as the tale got past the censors.

In 1986, Krone had a similar scuffle with jockey Miguel Rujano at Monmouth Park. Rujano felt that Krone was riding her mount too close to his, and, in order, this developed:

--Rujano hit Krone in the back of the head with his whip.

--Krone punched Rujano after the race.

--Rujano dunked Krone in the jockeys’ swimming pool.

--Krone threw a chair at Rujano.

“I won the race by 10 lengths, so what was he complaining about?” Krone says now. “The punch I got in was a real good one, though.”

Both jockeys were fined for the incident, but only Rujano was suspended.

Other men in Krone’s life have been more helpful. In Maryland, Bud and Richard Delp, the brothers who train horses, gave her a chance, and Bill Donovan, John Forbes and Steve Brown are other conditioners who saw her potential.

“I never thought once that I wouldn’t make it,” Krone said. “I just wouldn’t take no for an answer. And when things didn’t work out, I didn’t pay any mind, because when you’re young you only think about the good things that can happen.”

If you were angry enough to throw someone in a swimming pool, Julie Krone would seem to be an easy target. You might even try to do it with one arm tied behind your back. In a game of under-sized athletes, she still looks much smaller than her counterparts. And she’s equipped with a squeaky, high-pitched voice that makes her sound much younger than her years.

What makes her win, in a sport where the animals outweigh her, 10 to 1, and when many of the other jockeys have almost as much of an advantage in strength?

For one thing, Krone, whose mother bred and showed Arabian horses, was an athlete long before she started riding horses for a living. Growing up in Michigan, she took up gymnastics as a 10-year-old, which was eight years after she sat on her first horse.

Last year, a turf writer from Baltimore asked Krone about agility, and instead of answering she immediately did a 10-second acrobatic routine that would have had the judges gaping.

“How could you describe that?” Krone was asked.

“It was kind of a funky round-off and pivot,” she said. “It was a combination of a back handspring and cartwheel. I pivoted my hips and spun myself backwards.”

On a horse, Krone doesn’t rely on strength, but neither does Bill Shoemaker.

The important thing about Krone is that she listens. Last summer at Monmouth, where she won six races in one day and eventually turned the jockeys’ race into a rout, she was told by trainer Glenn Lane that the best place to be with a horse was on the rail, and Krone turned the advice into such an art form that even Lane was astounded.

Horses run for Krone and on Dec. 12, shortly before she would wrap up the Meadowlands title with 124 wins in 79 programs, she began a 24-hour spree that would be difficult to match. She won the Gallant Fox Handicap with Soar to the Stars that afternoon at Aqueduct, captured the Winter Quarters Handicap with Naskra Native that night at the Meadowlands and returned the next afternoon at Aqueduct to take the Gravesend Handicap aboard Vinnie the Viper.

Those two stakes wins at Aqueduct were actually the debut of Krone at this New York track, and the telephone of her agent, Larry (Snake) Cooper, has been ringing ever since.

Life hasn’t always been David Letterman and Newsweek interviews. At 17, Krone was handed a two-month suspension for smoking marijuana at a Maryland track, she once broke her back in a spill and was out for four months, and her mother, who lives in Florida, is battling cancer.

Julie Krone keeps sending her mother videocassettes of her winners, which might be the best therapy of all.

Back from her week-long suspension, Krone resumed riding with a winner here just the other day for trainer Wayne Lukas. It was an uncharacteristic Krone ride, however, because she closed from behind with a 4-year-old colt in the middle of the track, a tactic necessitated by an outside post in a six-furlong race.

“What I usually like to do is save ground, and stay on the fence,” Krone says. “Sometimes you’ll get blocked, but more often than not, that’s the place to be. When you think about it, it’s so easy that it’s hard.”