Like Mom, Krone Got Message

It took a wild ride on a spooky horse, but Julie Krone finally appreciated a story of star gazing her mother told her.

“She was training a jump pony,” Krone said, resting her broken left arm in her lap as she sat cross-legged on he couch.

“He was nasty. He wheeled under her, and she fell off.” Krone sprang from the couch and sprawled on the floor--”just like this.”

Her eyes flashed blue fire. Her voice was excited.

“There she is--it was night time--lying on her back. She said to me, ‘There’s nothing worse than looking up at the stars and hearing your horse gallop away.’ ”

At 26, Krone is the winner of more than $26 million in purses and one of the best jockeys racing today, man or woman. Only, today she’s not racing. She’s nursing a shattered arm back to health, answering mail and waiting until March, when she probably will be able to ride again.

The night after Thanksgiving, she was on a 2-year-old colt named My Rolin at the Meadowlands, where she is the all-time leading rider. The colt ducked from a shadow, put on the brakes, and Krone went flying. Her own horse kicked her toward the rail, another one hurdled her cleanly, and she was trampled by a third horse.

Then, she thought about her mom’s story. Its implications were astronomical.

“That’s what I felt like,” she said, still lying on her living room floor, all 4-foot-10 and 100 pounds of her. “Two horses jumped over me. I was laying on my back. I looked at one arm, and it was in an ‘L’ shape. I looked at the other, and it was an ‘S’ shape. I knew this couldn’t be right.

“Then my legs started going,” she said, knocking her knees together. “I looked down at my legs, and I thought, ‘Thank God, at least they’re working.’ Then I looked up at the lights, and I said, ‘Boy, my mom sure was right.’ ”

Later, doctors found that Krone had broken the big bone in her left forearm and dislocated her shoulder, elbow and wrist. Now, she has a metal plate in her arm, a 6-inch-long stitch mark covering it, and she’ll wear a removable cast for another six weeks. Four or five more weeks of therapy will follow.

“It seemed like forever before the ambulance came. The ground was so cold,” she said. “It was really weird lying there like that, on the ground, when I’m usually five feet above it.

“I hurt real bad for about 45 minutes. I was crying. I remember every bump in the road on the ride out.”

At Hackensack, N.J., Medical Center, where she was treated by Dr. Seth Kane, she received 27 bouquets of flowers, “and then I stopped counting.” The mail continues to inundate her.

“I get so much I can’t open them all anymore,” she said, pulling piles of mail from a shelf below her Pee Wee Herman and Freddie Krueger dolls. A few envelopes fell onto the floor.

“A lot of the letters come from little kids. Most of them come from people I don’t even know,” she said. “How can you read through letters like these and not feel better?”

Krone’s recent reading also included a particular issue of the Star, one of the supermarket tabloids that specialize in celebrity sex scandals and aliens from outer space. There was a brief story about her in it, recounting her run-ins with other jockeys. It made her sound like a roller derby queen, throwing elbows and forearm smashes as she circled the track.

“I think it’s hilarious,” she said. “I’m finally a star. I made the Star.”

But what about her reputation?

“I’m not worried. People don’t believe that stuff,” she said. “I’m not like that. Two times I’ve been in fights that I didn’t start.

“The last one, I started,” she said, lowering her eyes, her voice muffled in her blonde hair.

That fight, on Sept. 23, earned her a 20-day suspension and $600 fine. She hit jockey Joe Bravo with her whip as they rode side-by-side during the race, then got into a shoving match with him later. Stewards called it unsportsmanlike. She admits it, and she’s ashamed of it.

“My only defense was that I had gone 22 days straight, racing both night and day. I’d race in the day in New York, then at night at the Meadowlands. . . . Eat, sleep, race. Eat, sleep, race. I was at the end of my line.

“Then, Joe Bravo keeps coming in and coming in on his horse. I hollered at him to do something, and he just let his horse come in. He was putting other horses in jeopardy . . . and I smacked him.

“I paid for it. That stretch took five years off my life.”

Krone has been riding by herself since she was 3. Her mother, a dressage rider, taught her to ride back home on the farm in Michigan. Julie started racing at fairs when she was 15, and she rode her first money-making winner in 1980 at Tampa Bay Downs. It was her 11th mount as a professional.

Her childhood memories are like precious possessions to her, and she’s got a trunk full of them -- pictures, papers and keepsakes.

“Uh, oh,” she said, opening the lid. “We could be here for hours.”

First, there’s an 8-by-10 glossy of 15-year-old Julie, breaking from a gate for the first time on a racehorse.

“That’s me, there,” she said, pointing to a white cap in the crowd.

Next, there’s a 7- or 8-year-old Julie sitting on a fancy little pony, and she’s decked out like a cowgirl.

“I broke him myself,” she said. “Do you believe that?”

Finally, there’s a 4- or 5-year-old Julie sitting next to an old tree, back on the farm.

“The branches were so big, you could walk on them like a sidewalk,” she said. “I loved that tree.”

For a moment, she’s 5 again, not a care in the world. Then, she’s 26, treating herself to facials and a hairdo, going to antique stores, shopping with her boyfriend Jerry, writing letters, killing time while her arm mends.

“When I come back, I’d like to ride in the Kentucky Derby--about the third choice,” she said. A high-pitched laugh escapes involuntarily, and her cat jumps off the couch.

“Heck, I could have ridden in three or four Derbys, but the horses were going to be really ‘Ppphhhht.’

“When I come back, I’ll be happy riding anything.”