Diane Crump, first woman to compete as jockey in U.S., dies at 77

Diane Crump, who became the first woman to compete as a jockey in the United States and paved the way for the generations that would follow her in the saddle, died Thursday night, according to a social-media post from her family. Crump, who had been diagnosed with brain cancer in October of last year, was 77.

Debuting in 1969, Crump rode sporadically throughout a 30-year career and was credited with 228 wins as a rider when she retired for good in 1998. Her debut at Hialeah Park in Florida was followed the next year by a mount in the 1970 Kentucky Derby, riding Fathom to a 15th-place finish. She was the first female to ride in the Derby.

A native of Connecticut whose family moved to Florida when she was a child, Crump began her riding career at the height of the 1960s feminist movement. She had to be escorted into Hialeah Park by police to ride her first race, was roundly heckled by male handicappers, and was assigned an empty office at the track as her jockey’s quarters.

“I read all the negative press,” Crump said in a 2020 interview with the Louisville Courier-Journal on the 50th anniversary of her Derby ride. “But I just never let that negative press deter me.”

Two weeks after her first ride, she won her first race.

“The crowd was just swarming all over me,” Crump recalled in an interview with CNN in 2015. “They were crazy, up in arms. . . . The hecklers were yelling. ‘Go back to the kitchen and cook dinner.’ That was the mentality at the time. They thought I was going to be the downfall of the whole sport, which is such a medieval thought. I was like: ‘Come on people, this is the 1960s!’ ”

Crump’s own journey was paved by Kathryn Kusner, who successfully sued the Maryland Racing Commission for a rider’s license in 1968 but never competed because of an injury; and several females riders in Kentucky, including Penny Ann Early, who was named on several horses at Churchill in 1968 but was prevented from riding in a race due to boycotts by the jockey colony.

Crump rode full-time from 1969 until 1985, when she briefly retired to try her hand at training. She encountered some of the same prejudices while a trainer. Despite a serious riding accident in 1989, she returned to riding from 1992-98 but rode in only 174 races over those seven years, with only eight victories.

After her riding career, she started an equine sale business in Florida.

Julie Krone, the Hall of Fame jockey who remains the only woman to win a Triple Crown race, began her own career a dozen years after Crump began riding. On Friday, she said that “being a pioneer among women in horse racing was only one of many things I respected and loved about her.”

“She was an excellent communicator with horses, but a lot of what she gave me had nothing to do with horse racing,” Krone said. “She was wonderful with animals. I knew her as a very interesting person, so richly intelligent, a truly magnificent human being, and a lot of fun.”

Crump was diagnosed with gliobastoma, an aggressive brain cancer, late last year, and her family started a donation drive to help with her medical expenses.

“Diane has lived an extraordinary life, one marked by courage, compassion, and a trailblazing spirit,” her daughter wrote at the launch of the drive.

After the diagnosis, Crump moved to Virginia to receive palliative care.

“I want people to know that God gives you a dream for a reason, a love in your heart,” Crump said in the 2020 interview with the Courier-Journal. “If you follow that, if you don’t give up, you don’t give in, then you can attain more than you ever dreamed.”

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