With more than 3,700 career wins, Julie Krone is the leading woman Thoroughbred horse racing jockey of all time.
Raised on a horse farm in Eau Claire, Michigan, Krone began riding horses at an early age and won her first horse show when she was five years old. At the age of 14, after watching 18-year-old Steve Cauthen win a Triple Crown race, she set her sights on becoming a jockey.
Two short years later, Krone made her debut riding Tiny Star at Tampa Bay Downs; less than a month later, she won her first race aboard Lord Farkle at the same track (1981). She soon became the first woman to be leading rider at Monmouth Park, The Meadowlands, Belmont Park, Gulfstream Park and Atlantic City Race Course. Among her myriad achievements, Krone won six races in one day at both The Meadowlands (twice) and Monmouth Park, and won five races in one day at Saratoga Race Course and Santa Anita Park.
In 1993, Krone rode Colonial Affair to victory at the Belmont Stakes and made history as the first woman to win a Triple Crown event. She set records again in 2003 as the first woman to win a Breeders’ Cup event at the Juvenile Fillies and the first woman to win a million-dollar event at the Pacific Classic.
Krone is the recipient of many awards, including ESPN’s Professional Female Athlete of the Year (1993) and the Women’s Sports Foundation’s Wilma Rudolph Courage Award (2004). In 2000, she became the first woman inducted into the National Museum of Racing’s Hall of Fame.
Initially retired from horse racing in 1999, Krone became a commentator and analyst for the TVG racing network and the Hollywood Park simulcast network. She returned to the sport in 2002, retiring for the final time in 2004. Today, she maintains a close relationship with the Thoroughbred racing business and shares her love of horses through motivational speeches, clinics and private tutoring.
