Pioneering Jockey Diane Crump Loved Horses from the Start

by Sophie Schepps

Pioneering jockey Diane Crump, the first woman ever to ride in the Kentucky Der-by, is the only horse person in her family, and her fascination with horses seemed to come out of thin air. 

Born in Milford, Connecticut on the Long Island Sound and without a horse within many miles of her house, Crump turned to her imagination. “I thought about them,” she said. “And talked about them, read every horse book and drew horse pictures.”

While still a pre-teen, Crump’s parents decided to move to Florida and buy a piece of property to build a marina. The wheels began turning in her head and Crump formulated a plan.

“They promised me when we moved to Florida I would get a horse,” as she said, adding that she also took any odd job she could. “I delivered newspapers and mowed lawns. When I was 12, I saved up $150 and we moved to the Tampa Bay area.”

Crump purchased her first pony out of a newspaper classified ad and the seller taught her how to trail ride and basic horsemanship. Once the Crump family settled on a property, the seller also had an interesting proposition. He offered his two paint mares to Diane if her father would buy his land. And so he did.

Crump learned much from taming those two paints because they hadn’t been ridden in years. Soon however, she was riding western with other children and formed her own pony club. A friend was learning to be a blacksmith and first took her to the racetrack. She soon began handling the weanlings and teaching them to lead.

The Crump family then moved into town and Diane boarded her horse at a barn lo-cated near the Tampa Bay Downs racetrack. She felt an immediate draw to the facility.

“It was instant fascination,” she said. “It was the off-season and I would ride all around the track and go into the barn area. I was enthralled with it all.”

Crump continued to work with the weanlings and before long she was breaking yearlings. She began exercising horses brought back from injuries. A local trainer took a liking to her and snuck her into the track under a horse blanket in his car because she wasn’t even 16 years old.

“When I was a senior in high school, the horses that were weanlings when I first started were at the track learning how to be race horses,” she said. Knowing she had to push forward, Crump finished school early as a night student. “I went with them and learned how to gallop and breeze and come out of a gate. I was a groom, a hot walker, and an exercise rider. There was nothing I didn’t do.”

As one of only a handful of women even attempting to ride in pari-mutuel races, Crump garnered attention wherever she went. She was only permitted to compete when officials threatened to fine the male jockeys who were boycotting the races she entered. In 1969, at the age of 20, she rode in her first race at Hialeah in Miami on Bridle n Bit and placed ninth in a field of 12. She won her first race just two weeks later.

In 1970, Crump burst open the doors for women riders and was the first female to ride in Kentucky Derby. Atop her mount, Fathom, she placed 15th out of 17 but the fame she earned followed her everywhere. She continued to ride before finally retiring in 1999 with 228 career victories.

Crump said she knew when it was time to hang up her tack. Her aching body gave her the message.

“When I stopped riding races in 1999,” she said, “it took me two years to get out of pain. I was riding 20-30 horses a day for 40 years. I was worn out.”

Crump, who now lives in Linden, has spent the last decade training horses at the Middleburg Training Track. Once she retired, she also started Diane Crump Equine Sales. Her internet-based company continues to help place buyers with sellers of every type of horse imaginable.

“I’m a real estate company for horses,” she said. “Any consulting that people need in the horse world, I provide. Within a couple years it got big. I could use more people but I like to keep it personal.”

Looking back at her racing career, Crump said she has no regrets. When she started, she was forced to change clothes in a closet because no jockey room had space for women. By the time she retired, half of the exercise riders she met were female.

Although she’s credited with pioneering equality for female riders, what always kept her going was her passion for horses. 

“My whole life,” she said, “I did what I loved.”