Julie Krone

Childhood Dreams

Judi Krone was a riding instructor and former Michigan state equestrian champion, and she first put her daughter Julie on a horse when the child was only two. Judi Krone was trying to sell a palomino and hoping to demonstrate the steed's gentle nature. The horse trotted out, and the toddler reached down for the reins, tugged them, and brought the horse back. From then on Julie Krone loved horses and had one driving ambition: to ride in races.

Born in Benton Harbor, Michigan, on July 24, 1963, young Julie learned about horses from her mother. "Mom taught me all the ways to introduce a young horse to bridle and saddle, and how to train a horse to want to please a rider, which ultimately creates a positive experience for both horse and rider," Krone wrote in her autobiography, Riding for My Life. When Julie was six, the family moved to a farm in nearby Eau Claire. Julie and her older brother, Donnie, had free rein. "There were no fences to keep us in, no locked doors, rules, or set mealtimes," Krone later wrote in her autobiography. "I was as wild as the animals on the farm, and just as free." Her father, Don, was an art teacher and photographer who liked to take shots of young Julie taking back flips off a horse. Her parents did nothing but encourage her to ride, often recklessly. On one occasion she rode bareback and standing into the barn, ducking her head only at the last minute. She won her first ribbon at a horse show in an 18-and-under event when she was only five.

As a child, her main challenge was a horse named Filly. "Filly was elusive, naughty, and at times downright mean," Krone wrote in Riding for My Life. Filly would frequently run away with Julie on her back. "I credit Filly with teaching me to ride well. Just by being her nasty self, she taught me more than any other horse or instructor… Everything I did with Filly was an experiment. But by experimenting I learned to ride instinctively. There are some things a rider has to learn by touch, by reaction—lessons no instructor can give." When she later became a jockey, Krone would earn a reputation for having a close, instinctive rapport with her mounts. It all came from her immersion in horse riding and training as a youngster, following the lead of her mother but learning everything by doing it herself.

Krone was not interested in school—the only classes she liked were art and gym. Horses were always uppermost in her mind. Sometimes she slept with her whip, and she often dreamed of riding in races. As a sophomore in high school, she almost joined a circus as a trick rider, but changed her mind at the last minute. When she was 15, shortly after her parents divorced, she wrote in her diary: "I'm gonna be the greatest jock in the world because I think I can. I know I can." A few months later, her mother predated her birth certificate by three months so she could pass for 16 years old and get a job as a groom and exercise rider at Churchill Downs in Louisville, Kentucky. She worked there a few months, then raced that summer in Michigan, Indiana, and Ohio. In her senior year she dropped out of high school and moved to Florida to live with her grandparents and work as an exercise rider at Tampa Bay Downs. When she arrived at the track, officials there mistook her at first for a much younger girl, because she was so small. It took a lot of convincing for them to give her a job. Within five weeks, she had won her first race at that track.

Earned Respect

At an adult height of 4 foot 10 inches and barely weighing 100 pounds, Krone was small even for a jockey (whose average height is 5 foot 3 inches). And although other women had become jockeys starting in 1969, prejudice still lingered against the idea that a female could control a 1,200-pound thoroughbred. Krone not only looked like a pixie, she had a squeaky, high-pitched voice that also made it hard for her to command respect. But she learned to compensate. She developed a bone-crushing handshake, and she earned respect by refusing to give into intimidation by other jockeys and patronizing by owners and track officials. Often, other riders colluded against her, closing gaps and boxing her horse in by the rail. "Men just didn't want to be beaten by a little girl," she later wrote in Riding for My Life.

From the start, though, her special command of horses' emotional language set her apart from the rest of the pack. She won by coaxing horses rather than by whipping them, using her hands to communicate with her mounts, as she had done since she was a little girl. "She rode in this tight little ball that a horse hardly seemed to notice on its back," wrote Sports Illustrated's Gary Smith. "Other riders had to yank back on a colt that was chomping to run too soon in a race; she barely had to move her hands. Other riders had to slash the whip 15 times down the stretch; she might get the same acceleration with two."

Though gentle and patient with horses, Krone could be a terror with people who defied her or tried to subjugate her in any way. For years, she figured she needed to be more macho than the men she competed against just in order to survive. "I thought if I showed any feelings, they would be taken for weakness," she told Smith. After jockey Yves Turcotte hit her horse with his whip during a race in 1982, she shoved him off the scales during the post-race weighing. She punched jockey Miguel Rujano in 1986 after his whip hit her ear during a race, and then she hit him with a lawn chair. She was fined in 1989 for fighting with jockey Joe Bravo. These altercations earned her suspensions, but they also sent notice that she refused to give into pressure or intimidation.

Top Rank and Hard Knocks

By age 25, Krone was acknowledged as the best female jockey in history. She was the first woman ever to win five races in one day at a New York track, the first woman ever to win a riding title at a major track, and one of three jockeys ever to win six races on one card. She had ridden 1,200 winners and won $20 million in purses.

Krone had a wild streak that belied her little-girl voice and appearance. Mercurial and exuberant, but occasionally depressed and broken, she drove a red Porsche and never let personal relationships interfere with horse riding. In 1983—the year she won a second track title at Atlantic City and missed four months with a broken back after coming off a horse during a workout—officials at Pimlico Race Course in Maryland found marijuana in her car; she was suspended for 60 days and went into drug rehabilitation.

Even when she had proven herself a winner, Krone had to fight prejudice. Others picked on her riding style because it was so different—and called her a "diabolical" rider. She was always patient during races and sometimes was criticized for hanging back in the pack too long, waiting for an opening. But the horses she rode were so responsive to her gentle touch that her smart, studied riding could be mistaken for passivity. And win or lose, she was always kind to her mounts. "If I don't need to use the whip, I don't," she wrote in her autobiography. "A horse's trip is more enjoyable if I can coax him forward by pushing gently with my hands.… If a horse enjoys his race, he's going to try even harder next time."

In 1992, Krone became the first woman to ride in the Kentucky Derby. The following year, she became the first female winner of a Triple Crown race, riding 13-to-1 long-shot Colonial Affair to victory in the Belmont Stakes—"showing the patience, intelligence and tactical savvy that have made her one of the nation's leading performers in a game long dominated by men," wrote William Nack of Sports Illustrated. Two months later, in a race accident at Saratoga Springs, New York, Krone was thrown from her horse and kicked in the chest by another horse, bruising her heart and shattering her ankle. Only a heavy protective vest saved her life. It took her nine months to recuperate and return to riding. "I felt powerless," she wrote. "I've always been able to take care of myself, fight for myself, depend on myself." But she refused to quit. "I spent years trying to prove how tough a rider I was, trying to show the world that male or female, I was a talent," Krone wrote. "To show any weakness felt like failure to me."

In 1995, she married television reporter Matt Muzikar, riding six races at Saratoga the day of the wedding. She was back at the track to ride six more races the next morning.

In January 1996, riding at Florida's Gulfstream Park, she suffered another accident, breaking both her hands. That accident made her lose her nerve, and the facade of toughness she had maintained for so many years shattered completely. After six weeks, she returned to riding but did terribly. "Horses felt my anxiety, they got weird, they reared up," she said, according to Mark Miller in Salon. "I had been given a magical talent to positive-image a loser right into the winner's circle.… And then suddenly it was all gone, and I was exhausted." Krone became suicidal and was diagnosed by a psychiatrist as having post-traumatic stress disorder. She recovered by taking anti-depressants and finally finished her high-school degree.

Comeback

Krone never regained her top form, but by the time she retired in 1999, she had won 3,545 races and more than $81 million in purse, piloting 17 percent of her steeds to the winner's circle. The year she retired, she and Muzikar divorced. In 2001, she married Jay Hovdey, a racing writer. They lived in Del Mar, California, and she took up surfing.

In November 2002, Krone surprised the horse world by coming out of retirement, and she quickly won 20 more races. Unfortunately, it did not take long for another setback. In March 2003 she was in an accident at the starting gate at Santa Anita; she fractured two backbones and suffered three compressed vertebrae. Three months later, showing her customary grit, she was back racing. In the 2003 Del Mar meeting she rode 49 winners, including the __BODY__ million Pacific Classic. In November 2003, Krone became the first woman to win a race in the prestigious Breeders' Cup, on the back of favorite Halfbridled, steering the horse from far outside the pack to win. In December 2003 Krone suffered two fractured ribs at Hollywood Park where she had been in the lead, but later told Sports Illustrated she would be back sometime in February.

Krone was inducted into racing's Hall of Fame in 2000. At her acceptance speech, standing atop a milk carton to reach the microphone, she said: "I want this to be a lesson to all kids everywhere. If the stable gate is closed, climb the fence."

Books

Krone, Julie, with Nancy Ann Richardson, Riding for My Life, Little, Brown, 1995.

Periodicals

Knight-Ridder/Tribune News Service, August 7, 2000; October 24, 2003.

People, December 6, 1993; June 26, 1995; September 11, 1995.

Sports Illustrated, August 24, 1987; May 22, 1989; June 14, 1993; June 13, 1994; May 21, 2001; November 3, 2003; January 26, 2004.

Online

"Julie Krone," Salon, http://dir.salon.com/people/bc/2000/12/19/krone/index.html (December 30, 2003).