People

But horses don’t think about making history. They run.

“A fast horse is a fast horse, and I don’t think it matters whether it’s a filly running against the boys,” says Jeannine Edwards, an ESPN reporter and Cecil County resident. “Frankly, I’d like to see more of it. I think it’s exciting and energizing for the sport.”

Fillies aren’t the only ladies turning heads in the “sport of kings.” In the last four decades, women have broken down the gender barrier—quite often by ignoring it—making their presence known in roles traditionally dominated by men: jockeys, trainers, track executives, exercise riders, vets, and even blacksmiths.

“The barriers were broken down by women in the ‘60s. People like Barbara Jo Rubin and Mary Bacon, those female jockeys that were sort of oddities at the time. People are more accepting of women now,” says Edwards, a former trainer.

“The main thing is people are seeing that women are just as capable as men when it comes to handling horses, training horses, doctoring horses.”

Of the more than 6,500 licenses issued in 2009 by the Maryland Racing Commission, nearly a third went to women.

“Obviously, their impact is positive as far as the racing industry is concerned,” says Michael Hopkins, executive director of the commission. “They do well—as well as their male counterparts. It makes it that much more competitive.”

Hopkins’ predecessors were not as progressive, however.

In 1968, Kathy Kusner, a 28-year-old member of the U.S. Equestrian Team and Olympic medalist, became the first licensed female jockey in the United States when she took the Maryland Racing Commission to court in Prince George’s County, citing sexual discrimination.

“They were just coming up with everything they could think of for me—a girl—not to become a jockey while they were alive on this earth,” Kusner recalls.

“All this ‘first’ stuff is sort of silly because of a really ridiculous rule. It’s like all other discriminations,” adds Kusner, who was also the first woman to ride in the Maryland Hunt Cup.

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Andrea Seefeldt Knight, who grew up in Anne Arundel County, is one of five women to have ridden in the Kentucky Derby, and is only the second to ride in the Preakness.

“In the beginning, if somebody came up and said, ‘Oh, I’ve got a horse for you to ride. It’s a girl’s horse,’ that was another way of saying that none of the boys will ride it because it’s either: a) lame, b) crazy, or all of the above.”

Despite prejudice, heckling, even boycotts by their male counterparts, these first generations of women riders refused to bend or break.

“When I started in the early ‘80s, the men, the other riders and trainers, were very hard on the female jockeys,” says Knight, who rode from 1981 to 1994. “There were some that had a lot of class and accepted me right away, but there were old-timers that were very anti-women.

“I heard a lot of stuff that I learned to just filter out.”

If bias and lack of mounts weren’t bad enough, amenities for women at the tracks were less than ideal.

“In Charles Town, they had me in the janitor’s closet to change,” says Jennifer Rowland Small, a top Maryland rider in the 1970s. “I used to have to push a chair up against the door.”

Nationally, male jockeys still outnumber females nine to one, but in terms of professional athletics, it is the only sport (other than car racing) where both sexes compete against one another.