Horse Racing Article's
Name: Don Blazer - A Horse Of Course
Black Racing Riders
You don't see many Black riders these days.
You don't see many Blacks riding in rodeos. There was a Black world champion calf roper a couple of years ago, and there were lots of Black cowboys when the west was young.
You don't see Blacks riding jumpers. Yet a lot of Blacks have trained good jumpers, exercised them, and groomed them.
And you don't see a lot of Black jockeys, not any more. (In 20 years of training race horses I only knew two black jockeys; only one rode for me.)
At one time Black jockeys dominated one of America's great race tracks, and America's greatest race.
It was a Black jockey, Oliver Lewis who won the first Kentucky Derby in 1875 aboard Aristides.
Lewis wasn't supposed to win; he was supposed to set the pace for his stable mate. As it turned out, Lewis and Aristides set a blistering pace no other horse could match. They won the race easily.
Two years later another Black jockey, Billy Walker, rode Baden-Baden to victory.
In 1884 the greatest Black jockey of all times, Isaac Murphy, won the Derby on Buchanan.
Murphy didn't want to ride Buchanan who was winless going into the Derby, but he had signed a contract to ride for Black trainer William Bird, and the Churchill Downs racing officials ruled Murphy would ride the horse, or no horse. So Murphy rode; and in his standard style of not going to the whip, he came home an easy winner. Buchanan didn?t start well, but Murphy was able to steady him, and by the middle of the race the horse had settled into his winning stride.
Murphy, whose real name was Burns, was regarded as a great judge of pace, and was therefore a favorite with many of the best trainers.
In 1890 Murphy won the Derby on a horse named Riley, and in 1891 Murphy won again on Kingman, who was trained by Dud Allen, the last great Black trainer of the era to saddle a Derby winner. With the win on Kingman, Murphy became the first jockey to win three Kentucky derbies.
During his peak years of riding, Murphy earned a staggering $15,000 as his share of purses. In those days that was a lot of money; today, just for his three Derby wins, he would have earned $120,000.
Murphy always had trouble making weight, and the problem finally caused his retirement in 1895. The year following, he died of pneumonia.
His final record: 628 victories in 1,412 life-time starts. That?s getting in the winner?s circle 44 per cent of the time, and that?s phenomenal; especially when you consider the favorite horse only wins 33 per cent of the time.
Erskine Henderson and Alex Perry, another Black trainer-jockey team, won the Derby in 1885 with Joe Cotton.
And in 1901 and 1902 Black jockey Jimmy Winkfield won the Derby on His Eminence, and then on Alan-a-Dale.
Other Black jockeys to win the Derby include George Lewis on Fonso, Babe Hurd aboard Apollo, Isaac Lewis piloting Montrose, Alonzo Clayton on Azra, James ?Soup? Perkins on Halma and Willie Simms, once on Ben Brush and again on Plaudit.
Black jockeys won 15 of the first 28 Kentucky derbies; more than 50 per cent. That?s one fantastic record.
Interestingly, the Kentucky Derby was doing pretty well during the first 15 years of its existence. But about 1892, the Derby started a very rapid downhill slide, drawing less than top quality horses, and often fields of less than five horses. It was during those depressed years of the Kentucky Derby that Black riders stopped appearing in what is today easily the most famous race in America.
The Derby, of course, is back, bigger and stronger than ever, but with no Black jockeys that I know of.
With all their previous success, I don?t know why you don?t see many Black riders these days. |
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