Daily Racing Form National Digital Edition
25 years after win, satisfaction lingers for Julie Krone
CARLSBAD, Calif. – In some ways, Julie Krone’s life today is just as it was 25 years ago, when she helped mold youngsters over a period of months, in concert with others who had the same goal, to see it pay off with a brilliant performance when it counted most.
It used to be with horses. Krone won 3,704 races, none more significant than her 1993 Belmont Stakes victory aboard Colonial Affair, to this day the only Triple Crown race won by a female jockey.
Now, it is with young thespians, including her 12-yearold daughter, Lorelei, as part of theater groups, both in the local community and at her daughter’s school. Both mother and daughter were cited late last month as finalists for local awards for, respectively, costume design and acting for a stage production of “The Little Mermaid.”
Much as she’ll light up when recounting details of her exploits on the racetrack, Krone, 54, now is just as animated when discussing her theater work. Her next project is doing costumes for a production of “Mary Poppins.”
“I like it. I like it so much,” she said in a recent interview at the home she shares with her husband of 17 years, Jay Hovdey, Lorelei’s father and the executive columnist for Daily Racing Form. “There are so many people involved, working with the kids. It’s really cool being in a community like that. I really get a kick out of it, the quick costume changes, the frenzy.
“I’ve always been obsessed with the theater. When I was living in New York, I’d go to the theater by myself, or with theater friends.”
Krone said that if she hadn’t become a jockey, “I’m thinking that would have been my world.”
This weekend, Krone will return to New York for a series of ontrack appearances at Belmont Park coinciding with the silver anniversary of her Belmont Stakes victory. Krone said that her lasting memory of that race is not the historical significance of it, but, rather, the satisfaction of seeing months of preparation in concert with Colonial Affair and trainer Scotty Schulhofer come to fruition.
“I had just started to understand that a series of events, the preps, the workouts, that if everything stays on track, things turn out well,” Krone said. “Colonial Affair, every race we wanted to run in, every time he needed to breeze, everything came together.
“It just felt like everyday horsemanship paid off.”
Krone would be at Schulhofer’s barn every morning. It felt, she said, like “we’re really good horsemen, and we know that we got this.”
Colonial Affair, owned by Centennial Farms, “was a clown,” Krone said.
“He had to do everything four times before he would do it,” she said. “You had to let him mess up. You couldn’t force it. He was a little bit backwards. But when he got things – whoa! – he’d lock on and just excel.”
Colonial Affair was third in his debut in October 1992 with Krone. She had to miss his next race, and told her replacement that day, Richard Migliore, “You’re going to break the maiden of the horse that’s going to win the Belmont.”
Colonial Affair won that race by 5 3/4 lengths at 10-1.
“It was fun to have Richie ride the horse that day because he wasn’t someone who would turn the horse inside out,” Krone said. “There aren’t many moments like that you can share with another jockey, and that’s why I like Richie Migliore so much, why he’s one of my best friends.”
Krone was back on Colonial
Affair for his next two starts at age 2, and then for the start of his campaign at age 3, when Colonial Affair returned from a lengthy layoff to win a pair of allowance races. He then finished second in the Peter Pan Stakes in his final start before the Belmont.
“I absolutely thought he was going to win,” Krone said.
Colonial Affair, sent off at nearly 14-1 in a Belmont field that included Kentucky Derby winner Sea Hero and Preakness winner Prairie Bayou, was sixth midway through the race, ranged up powerfully four paths wide coming off the final bend, then hit the front outside the furlong pole.
“Julie Krone, riding for her life,” track announcer Tom Durkin said over the Belmont Park loudspeakers.
Colonial Affair was home free. He won by 2 1/4 lengths.
Krone’s idol, 1978 Triple Crown-winning jockey Steve Cauthen, was doing the color commentary for ABC’s broadcast that day. As she was interviewed in the winner’s circle by Jim McKay, Krone said that on the far turn, she thought to herself, “I saw Steve Cauthen win the final leg of the Triple Crown, and I looked at my mom and I said, ‘Mom, I want to be a jockey.’ … And now I’m gonna win the Belmont.”
“That seems like a childhood dream,” she said in a recent interview. “And then to have it come to fruition.”
The post-race celebration was muted. Though Krone shared a joyous phone call after the race with her mother – “You have to peel me off the ceiling,” Judi Krone, who died in 1999, told her daughter – Krone had noticed when galloping out after the race that Prairie Bayou had been pulled up on the backstretch. It turned out he had suffered injuries that were irreparable, and he was euthanized shortly after the race.
Krone was presented with a Chrysler LHS, owing to that car company’s sponsorship of the Triple Crown, but instead of taking the car she divided the value of the vehicle in donations to three charities – the Humane Society, the U.S. Olympic Equestrian Team, and Popcorn Park Zoo, a small New Jersey facility that cares for wildlife animals that have been abandoned or abused.
Krone had a low-key dinner, “pizza and beer at King Umberto’s,” she recalled.
In subsequent days, Krone was roundly feted for her achievement. She appeared on shows such as “Late Night with David Letterman” and “Live with Regis and Kathie Lee.” Later that year she was voted the female athlete of the year in individual sports by the Women’s Sports Foundation.
Colonial Affair competed through his 4-year-old season, winning such major races as the Whitney and Jockey Club Gold Cup. He died in April 2013 at age 23 in Argentina.
Schulhofer, who had been voted into the National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame in 1992, retired in 2001 and died at age 80 in 2006 in Florida.
Don Little, who ran the Centennial Farm partnership, died in 2012 at age 77 from injuries suffered in a showjumping accident. His son Don Little Jr. is now the president of Centennial.
Krone rode through 1999, retired, and the next year was voted into the Hall of Fame, where, much as with the Belmont Stakes, she is the only female jockey so honored. After largely competing on the East Coast before her retirement, she returned to the saddle and competed anew on the West Coast from 2002 until 2004.
Now, the show goes on in another venue.