For Female Jockeys in General, and Especially in California, It Has Been...NO JOY RIDE

After she lost to Gary Stevens last March in a gimmicky Santa Anita match race that proved nothing, Julie Krone made an offhand remark about possibly returning to California to ride regularly.

But no one in these parts has been surprised that with the start of a new year, Krone is ensconced at Gulfstream Park in Florida, where she usually spends her winters quite successfully. The tough Southern California riding circuit--Santa Anita, Hollywood Park and Del Mar--is a tempting, lucrative challenge for jockeys in the East, but the few who have migrated and succeeded have one thing in common: They’re all men. The riches of the California tracks are only mirages for female riders.

It used to be hardscrabble at major tracks everywhere for female jockeys, who didn’t tiptoe into the 20th century until 1968, when a Maryland judge forced a state racing commission to license Kathy Kusner, an equestrian.

In the 1970s, women rode a lot of winners, but most of them competed in the hinterland, at minor league

tracks such as Waterford Park, Tampa Bay Downs and River Downs.

In the 1980s, the 4-foot 10 1/2-inch Krone made a quantum leap for women, riding top horses in New York and New Jersey and earning hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. Her breakthrough crested in 1993 when she won the Belmont Stakes with Colonial Affair, becoming the first woman to ride the winner of a Triple Crown race.

Rosemary Homeister, riding mostly in New Jersey in 1992, became the only female jockey to win an Eclipse award, getting the statuette for best apprentice when the leading vote-getter, Jesus Bracho, was disqualified.

In recent years, Donna Barton has been a Krone counterpart in Kentucky. The daughter of Patti Barton, a riding pioneer in the 1970s and the first woman to ride 1,000 winners, Donna rode horses that earned $3.6 million in 1995. And last year, she won nine stakes, six of them for trainer Wayne Lukas’ powerful stable.

In 1995, Barton came within a neck of becoming the first woman to win a Breeders’ Cup race when her Hennessy lost to Unbridled’s Song in the $1-million Juvenile at Belmont Park.

But even Krone and Barton would be longshots to click on the local circuit. Jockeys concede that you are what you get to ride, and since Tuesdee Testa rode a landmark winner at Santa Anita in 1969, women in California have been riding, with few exceptions, hopeless horses that nobody else wants.

“Julie probably wouldn’t win that much in California, because she wouldn’t get the top horses to ride,” former jockey Cheryl White said. “I don’t think a woman rider will ever hit it big out here. With all the good [male] jocks around, it’s always going to be too tough for them to get the good horses.”

The daughter of a trainer who started two horses in the Kentucky Derby, White rode her first race at Thistledown in Cleveland in 1971. She came to Southern California a couple of years later, then, with business almost nonexistent on the major thoroughbred circuit, moved to the Northern California fairs, where she was successful riding Appaloosas and quarter horses. White now works in Southern California, as a stewards’ aide and track official.

IT’S A LIVING

“The first race I ever rode [at Del Mar in 1981] was a 159-1 shot, and I’m still riding 159-1 shots,” lamented Joy Scott, one of the few women jockeys riding at Santa Anita. “The only mounts I get are from the barns that are struggling, just like me. Sometimes you think the door’s about ready to open, but then it slams shut again.”

Scott, 38, was a leading jockey at some of the fair meets in Northern California in the mid-1980s and last March she went over the $2-million mark in purses. Using the 10% rule as a yardstick, Scott’s estimated income averages less than $15,000 a year.

“I make a living,” said Scott, who recently went up to Bay Meadows and rode a winner.

She lives in Arcadia, not far from Santa Anita, with her 9-year-old son, Jessie.

“I’m a single parent, so it’s not like I could just pick up and go to another track,” she said. “It’s difficult, because this is an early business [exercising and working horses in the mornings], and I know I’m missing a lot with [Jessie]. But he still tops the list of my priorities.”

Scott doesn’t employ an agent, who would make the rounds of the barns, trying to line up horses for her to ride, because she would have to pay the going rate of 25% of her earnings as a commission. The other day, she was kidding with Scott McClellan, the high-powered agent who books mounts for Chris McCarron and Alex Solis.

“I’d win a few of these races if you’d get me some of the horses those guys ride,” Scott said.

“You’ve never asked me,” McClellan kidded back. Agents are prohibited from representing more than two jockeys.

For woman jockeys, racing here has been nearly 30 years of frustration.

In 1969, after she had tried to ride at Churchill Downs and triggered a jockeys’ boycott that would have canceled a race, Penny Ann Early obtained a California riding license and became the first woman to ride here.

Another name from the early years is that of Sandy Schleiffers, who couldn’t stir up any business locally and eventually entered a convent.

In 1969, Connie Hendricks, an exercise rider at Santa Anita, asked the stewards about a riding license and was told that only women under 30 would be considered. Hendricks was 35 and didn’t think about calling a lawyer.

“Penny Ann worked for me, off and on, out here and in Kentucky, for about 20 years,” Santa Anita trainer Willard Proctor said. “I gave her as much of a chance as I could. Some girls can ride, but they’ve got nobody behind them. They need someone to get them started. A stable with good horses can’t take the chance, because your owners want you to ride all the good men who are available.”

The late Bob Kerlan, the orthopedic surgeon who used to be the house doctor at Hollywood Park, told the Lexington Herald-Leader a few years ago that women riders aren’t as strong as men.

“But I’m not sure strength is that important in a race,” Kerlan said. “Jule Krone has proved that the good women jockeys are just as good as the good men jockeys. There’s still some bigotry among trainers. They like women working their horses, but not riding them in races.”

Sometimes there’s prejudice among women too. Natalie Valpredo, who helps run an established racing and breeding operation in California, recounted an anecdote about a day at Fairplex Park in Pomona two years ago.

“My father [John Valpredo] wanted to put Joy Scott on one of our horses,” she said. “I said, ‘She doesn’t have a chance against the men.’ But Joy rode the horse and won the race. Then she won another one.”

By then, it was time for another opinion. Natalie asked her former husband, jockey Jerry Lambert, about Scott.

“She can ride,” Lambert said. “She’s got every bit as much talent as the guys.”

Scott rides frequently for the Valpredos now.

The book on even the good female riders is that they might have hands of velvet, like Bill Shoemaker or Pat Day’s, and they might communicate with horses well, but they’re overmatched in the final sixteenth of a mile, when true grit rules.

“Don’t kid yourself about Joy Scott,” Natalie Valpredo said. “I remember a race where she was in a three-way battle to the wire with Solis and [Kent] Desormeaux. She beat both of them. All right, she’s not a strong whipper like Laffit Pincay. But other than five or six guys in that jocks’ room, who is?”

It’s still difficult, though, for trainers to consider Scott, Christine Davenport or Twe Lian when Santa Anita is loaded with Hall of Famers and Eclipse award winners.

Overall, times really haven’t changed since 1987, when Vicky Aragon, a success elsewhere, moved to California and was told by a trainer, “The best woman out here isn’t as good as the worst guy.”

Aragon retreated to Northern California and Seattle, resuming a productive career that has produced more than 1,500 winners.

“Racing is the only sport where you pay an athlete the same amount, no matter who he is,” said Roger Stein, a trainer at Santa Anita. “It doesn’t matter whether Corey Nakatani or Joy Scott wins a stake for you, they get 10% of the purse. So what are you going to do, ride Joy Scott instead of Nakatani or Gary Stevens? It’d be like having Shaquille O’Neal on your team and using him as a backup.

“If I were a young woman starting out in this game, I wouldn’t ride until the incentive was there. I wouldn’t ride a horse unless he had a chance on the [Racing] Form. There’s no doubt that women don’t get the margin for error that the guys get. All the big jocks make mistakes too. But it’s just that you accept them more, because they’re the top guys.”

A way to a trainer’s heart, for a jockey of either sex, used to be galloping horses in the mornings and eventually picking up mounts in the afternoons.

“I don’t do that anymore,” Scott said. “You do that and then everybody pegs you as an exercise rider and nothing else. You get stuck.”

THE ARABIAN ALTERNATIVE

Christine Davenport, who was six days short of her 24th birthday when she won her first race at Santa Anita in 1989, gets up at 4:30 each morning to work horses at Hollywood Park. She had ridden more than 100 winners, but in Southern California they have come like drips from a leaky faucet.

Davenport, who has had five mounts this season at Santa Anita, has moved on to mixed-breed meets. At Los Alamitos last year, she won more than 25 races, riding more Arabians than thoroughbreds.

“Ross Fenstermaker, who always supported me when he was a trainer, is a jocks’ agent now, and he wants to help,” Davenport said. “I gallop a lot of horses because it keeps me fit and in shape. I see a nutritionist who keeps me at a natural 104 pounds. I use the three flights of stairs up to my apartment as a fitness builder.

“But you still have to do something special to be noticed. I’m ever hopeful. You need to hook up with a good horse to stimulate everybody, but there aren’t enough women in the horse owners’ club for that to happen.

“If the trainers had confidence in themselves, maybe they’d ride some of us [female jockeys]. If they had enough confidence in their training, they could put a monkey up on a horse and he’d win. The trainers aren’t confident, and then they give in to the pressure from their owners.”

WIN SOME, LOSE A BIG ONE

Even Donna Barton, who finished 27th nationally last year, winning 134 races and riding horses that earned $4.5 million, was bumped by Wayne Lukas when Boston Harbor was to run in important races late in the year.

Barton rode the colt to three wins by a combined margin of 18 lengths, but for two stakes in October, including the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile, Jerry Bailey got the call. Boston Harbor won the Breeders’ Cup and an Eclipse award, and Bailey continues to ride the Kentucky Derby prospect this year.

With Barton, the apple must fall far from the tree. Her mother, Patti Barton, shot from the hip and once fought a male jockey by grabbing him by the crotch. Johnny Carson did his signature pencil flip when he heard that story on the show. What Patti Barton would have said about losing a horse the caliber of Boston Harbor wouldn’t be appropriate for a family newspaper.

Donna Barton is a paragon of diplomacy.

“I’ve been riding horses for nine years and Jerry Bailey’s been at it for 20,” she said. “Even Jerry wasn’t getting the horses I’ve been getting when he was in his ninth year. I was just happy to get to ride Boston Harbor the times I did. I’m confident that I’ll be collecting other jockeys’ mounts some day. I’m already doing that at a lower level, but eventually it’ll be at a higher level.”

In a four-race bonus series that earned Boston Harbor an extra $1 million, Barton rode him to two wins. Her prorated share was $50,000, with the other jockeys--Bailey and Mike Luzzi--earning $25,000 apiece.

TOUCHING ALL BASES

Twe Lian was born 35 years ago in what was then Burma. Her mother and an uncle are doctors, but after two years of college, Lian dropped out to ride full time. Or as full time as the mounts will allow.

Her younger sister, Em, went down in a morning spill at Santa Anita five years ago and is paralyzed from the waist down. Twe came down from Washington to visit and has stayed.

More than once, Lian has been at Santa Anita, Hollywood Park, Fairplex Park and Los Alamitos on the same morning to work horses. She’s also been known to gallop a horse at Santa Anita, work one at Hollywood, 40 miles away, and return to Santa Anita to gallop one more. A mount at Santa Anita last Saturday was her sixth of the meet.

“It is kind of [cliquish] around here,” Lian said. “My mother would have been happy if I had become a lawyer, doctor or something, but this is what I like.”

On April 1, 1991, Lian went down at Portland Meadows and broke a shoulder. On April 1, 1993, at Santa Anita, there was another spill and she broke the other shoulder. This is one more odd-numbered year and another April Fool’s Day looms.

“I’m going to be real careful,” she said.