It's been 50+ years since first woman rode in Kentucky Derby. Why are female jockeys still rare?

When Penny Ann Early attempted to become the first female jockey to race at Churchill Downs in November 1968, many of the male jockeys at the meet made no effort to hide their displeasure.

“I thought it was a big joke,” jockey Don Brumfield said, according to the Nov. 8, 1968, edition of The Courier Journal. “I never thought she’d actually try to get a license. … I think women oughta be home washing dishes – not riding horses.”

“I don’t think a woman has any business riding thoroughbreds,” jockey Laffit Pincay Jr. added.

Early was granted a temporary license by the Kentucky State Racing Commission on Nov. 14, but her detractors refused to back down. Her first attempt to race was canceled when the horse she was scheduled to ride on Nov. 16 was scratched because of track conditions. Three days later she was pulled from another horse the morning of her scheduled race.

After owners Wayne Moran and Fred Wirth promised Early a ride on Witness in the fourth race on Nov. 21, the other jockeys followed through on a promised boycott, refusing to ride. With no other riders available – marking the first jockey boycott of a race in Churchill Downs history – the race was canceled.

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The jockeys’ strategy prevented Early from breaking the gender barrier at Churchill Downs in the fall 1968 meet, but Diane Crump, who also had applied for a license but was not granted one before the meet ended, would become the first woman to race at Churchill Downs five months later. A year after that, Crump became the first woman to ride in the Kentucky Derby.

Now 53 years after Crump’s first race, the wave of female jockeys she hoped her history-making ride would usher in has failed to materialize. Only five other women have raced in the Derby. Women account for just 6.5% of the Jockeys’ Guild membership.

“That part I thought would be more,” Crump told The Courier Journal this week. “But for me, it was just the fact that if you’re capable, you should be able to do it, no matter who you are.”

Why have there not been more female jockeys in the Kentucky Derby?

Louisville Times sports editor Dean Eagle laid out the most common list of complaints about Early’s attempt to ride at Churchill Downs in the Nov. 17, 1968, edition of The Courier Journal and Times:

• She will get hurt
• Other jockeys will lessen their chances trying to be chivalrous
• Bettors won’t take kindly to a race in which Miss Early rides because various factors will go against a formful finish odds-wise.

“It probably lasted longer in horse racing than a lot of other parts of society, but it was just unfathomable (at the time),” historian and author of several horse racing books James C. Nicholson said. “…It’s fairly easy to explain why women were slow to be welcomed to the sport initially, but you wouldn’t think there would be any reason (now). It’s one of few sports that people ought to be able to participate in on a fairly level playing field. Might even be easier for a woman assuming more women than men could more easily do the weight assignments.”

The sexism faced by Early and Crump was not limited to the other jockeys.

Reporters called the first wave of female jockeys “jockettes.” Multiple stories in The Courier Journal during the week Early attempted to ride in the 1968 meet made reference to her bust size. A Courier Journal editorial advocating for Early to be allowed to race concluded with the argument, “Whatever her riding ability may be, Miss Early would make the most attractive jockey Kentucky has ever seen.”

Even as such overt sexism has lessened and arguments that female jockeys could not be as effective as men have been disproven – a recent scientific study from Australia found a jockey’s sex did not influence racehorse speed or stride length at any training intensity – other factors have continued to limit the number of female jockeys at horseracing’s highest levels.

“To me, now it’s a numbers’ game almost,” Crump said.

At most, 20 spots are available in the Kentucky Derby for jockeys each year. With so much money on the line, owners and trainers almost always award those rides to the jockeys in the sport who they are most familiar with. The cutthroat decisions leave even some of the sport’s most successful jockeys pulled off a horse in the weeks leading up to the Derby.

Only a small percentage of male jockeys ever race in a Kentucky Derby. With far fewer female jockeys in the total pool, it is even harder to break into that exclusive pool.

Due to the scarcity of rides, Crump advises young female jockeys to first make sure they race at a track where they can get as many rides as possible. Winning races in those settings offers valuable experience that jockeys can then use to land mounts at higher-profile tracks and meets.

'They have to be good'

Theoretically, success at higher profile meets would breed more opportunity. That was the experience of jockey Rosie Napravnik, who holds the record for most Kentucky Derbys by a female jockey (three) and highest finish in the Derby by a female jockey (fifth).

When Napravnik first tested her skills in New York, she initially wondered if she was not being given a fair opportunity because she was a woman.

“Then I quickly realized that was not the case,” Napravnik said. “The case was I just was not as good as those jockeys yet because I was less experienced and I hadn’t been riding with the best jockeys in the country. So, how could I be that good at that point? Riding in that colony improved my riding immensely.”

Napravnik grew up competing in horse shows where it was actually rare to see a boy participating in the various events. While she naturally might have been drawn to the facets of equestrian sports where women riders are more prevalent since her mother was an eventing coach, Napravnik quickly decided her dream was to be a flat racing jockey. 

How did she overcome any bias against female jockeys?

“In the early years of my career, I definitely did not have an understanding of why it was a big deal that I was a girl,” Napravnik said. “Throughout my career, I realized just how rare it is to have such success, especially early on and consistently throughout your career as a female. I’ve been asked the question so many times, why were there not more female jockeys? I do really truly believe that the answer is the mindset of the individual.

“If you are programmed to believe that there will be huge obstacles, there are plenty of women who are perfectly willing to breakthrough barriers and conquer those obstacles. But for me, I just didn’t see them. I didn’t see the barriers. I didn’t see the obstacles. I just kept my head down and kept riding.”

Napravnik, who retired in 2015, rode Pants on Fire to a ninth-place finish in her first Derby in 2011. A year later, she became the first female jockey to win the Kentucky Oaks aboard Believe You Can. She finished fifth on Mylute in 2013 Derby, won the Oaks again in 2014 on Untapable, then became the first woman to win multiple Breeders’ Cup races later that year. She is the only woman to ride in all three Triple Crown races.

But Napravnik’s last Derby ride came in 2014. The eight-year drought without a female jockey in the Derby ties the longest period without a woman to ride in the Derby since the 14-year stretch between Crump’s Derby in 1970 and Patricia Cooksey becoming the second woman to ride in the Derby in 1984.

It has now been 29 years since Julie Krone became the only woman to win a Triple Crown race in the 1993 Belmont Stakes.

Still, Crump remains confident the work she and Early put in will continue to be felt in the sport for years to come.

“I just think they’re out there,” Crump said. “Just in a smaller number. Look at how good Rosie Napravnik was. Did you ever watch her ride? Holy moly, that girl could ride anything and ride the hair off of it.

“…But the ones that want to do it, have the inclination, they’re out there. And they’re good. They have to be good because still no matter what anyone says they have to prove themselves more than a man.”