Krone Says She Will Resume Riding Career

Julie Krone was reminded of the Al Pacino line from the third “Godfather” film.

“You know the one,” Krone said. “ ‘Every time I try to get out, they keep dragging me back in.’ ”

Dragging Krone back into race riding is her unquenchable love for the horse. So on Friday, more than three years after she quit the game, the Hall of Fame jockey -- and the only woman ever enshrined at Saratoga Springs, N.Y. -- said that she’d be making a comeback, either later this month at Santa Anita or when the Hollywood Park meet opens Nov. 6.

Inevitably, they’ll need to redo her bronze plaque in upstate New York, the one that said she retired April 11, 1999, with 3,545 wins, a record for a female rider. The No. 2 jockey on that list, the still-active Patti Cooksey, trails Krone by about 1,400 wins.

A lot has happened to Krone, 39, in the last few years. Her mother, Judi Krone, who introduced her daughter to a Shetland pony before she was 5, died after a long battle with cancer. Julie Krone, whose earlier marriage had broken up, was married again, to Jay Hovdey, a columnist for the Daily Racing Form. Krone became a California TV personality, working for Fox, Television Games Network (TVG) and Hollywood Park.

But Krone couldn’t keep from climbing on horses, and she galloped them in the morning for trainer Richard Mandella the last two summers at Del Mar. More recently, she has been exercising the horses of Laura De Seroux, another trainer, at the San Luis Rey Downs training center in Bonsall, Calif.

“I got on five or six horses one morning,” Krone said, “and I said to myself, ‘Hey, this is still really fun.’ That’s when it hit me that I ought to be out there again.”

-- Bill Christine