NEWNow you can listen to Pak Gazette articles!
Diane Crump, the first woman to compete in the Kentucky Derby as a jockey, died this week at the age of 77.
Crump was diagnosed with an aggressive form of brain cancer in October and died Thursday night at a hospice center in Winchester, Virginia, his daughter, Della Payne, told The Associated Press.
In 1969, she became the first woman to ride professionally in a horse race, and a year later, she became the first female jockey in the Kentucky Derby. It would be 14 more years before another woman participated in the event.
Since then, only four others have raced in it.
CLICK HERE FOR MORE SPORTS COVERAGE ON PakGazette.Com
Crump won 228 races before his last race in 1998, a month before his 50th birthday and nearly 30 years after his pioneering ride at Hialeah Park in Florida on February 7, 1969.
Crump was one of several women who successfully fought at that time to be granted a jockey license, but still needed a trainer willing to put them in a race and then have the race run. Others were frustrated when riders boycotted or threatened to boycott if a woman rode.
Churchill Downs Racetrack president Mike Anderson said in a statement Friday that Crump “will always be respected and fondly remembered in horse racing lore.”
He noted that Crump, who had been riding since age 5 and galloping young Thoroughbreds since she was a teenager, “was an iconic trailblazer who admirably fulfilled her childhood dreams.”
THE FAMOUS HORSE RACING RIDER WHO RIDE THE LEGENDARY SECRETARY TO THE TRIPLE CROWN DIES AT AGE 84
The 149th running of the Kentucky Derby at Churchill Downs on May 6, 2023 in Louisville, Kentucky. (Joe Robbins/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
Chris Goodlett of the Kentucky Derby Museum said, “Diane Crump’s name represents courage, determination and progress. Her determination in the face of overwhelming odds opened doors for generations of jockeys and inspired countless others far beyond racing.”
After retiring from racing, Crump settled in Virginia and started a business helping people buy and sell horses.
In later years, he took his therapy dogs, all dachshunds, to visit patients in hospitals and other medical clinics. He regularly visited some with chronic illnesses for years.
Payne said that when her mother entered assisted living a month ago, she was already “almost famous” at the medical center for the time she had spent there, and a “constant stream” of doctors and nurses came to see her. One of the last people to visit her was the man who mowed her lawn.
His daughter said Crump would never take “no” for an answer, whether it was becoming a jockey or helping someone in need.
“I wouldn’t say she was as competitive as she was stubborn,” Payne said. “If someone counted on her, she could never let anyone down.”
Later in life, Crump tattooed his favorite fundamental characteristics on his forearms: “Kindness” on the left, “Compassion” on the right.
CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE Pak Gazette APP
Diane Crump keeps pace with Born In A Trunk’s Mike Sorentino and Shir-Tee’s Craig Perret during race seven in Hialeah. Diane, 20, became the first woman to compete in a regular event in the history of American Thoroughbred racing. She finished tenth out of twelve participants. (Bettmann/Getty Images)
Crump will be cremated and her ashes interred between her parents at Prospect Hill Cemetery in Front Royal, Virginia.
