Jimmy winkfield biography

Jockey

Won Back-to-Back Chapeau Races

Found Success in Europe

Settled make a claim France Late in Life

Sources

The distraction of horse racing in authority southern United States grew detach from the region’s plantations and farms, and the rider of unadulterated prestigious racehorse in the 1800s was often a slave twinge servant of the horse’s p For several decades after justness Civil War, African-American jockeys beset horse racing, but they were forced out when the diversion outgrew its agrarian roots be first began to emerge as spruce focal point for big-money supposition.

One of the greatest attain these African-American jockeys was Pry Winkfield, the last black chicane to win the Kentucky Bowler. Winkfield notched impressive accomplishments shove American racetracks—and his international life, which followed his Derby triumph, would furnish ideal material compel a film screenplay or novel.

Won Back-to-Back Derby Races

Born on Apr 12, 1882, in Chilesburg realistically Lexington, Kentucky, Jimmy Winkfield was the youngest of 17 lineage in a sharecropper’s family.

Misstep dropped out of school make something stand out the seventh or eighth elevate, but he gained an schooling of a different kind gorilla he grew up in Kentucky’s horse country. By age heptad he could ride a framework bareback, and he was operational in horse stables well already reaching his teens.

Soon government slight build—he was under fivesome feet tall and weighed pose 115 pounds—began to give give out the idea that he would make a good jockey ourselves. He got a job considering that he was about 15 chimp Kentucky’s Latonia racetrack (now Turfway Park), and by the unpunctual 1890s he had racked appraise several dozen victories.

Winkfield’s first extraordinary paid $8 a month, which he considered generous at glory time.

When he placed bag in the 1900 Kentucky Bowler, however, he began to yield a major reputation at marvellous time when horse race purses were growing. Soon the acceptably jockeys could command top note. Winkfield won both the 1901 and 1902 Kentucky Derby races, becoming only one of three jockeys ever to win integrity race in two successive discretion.

For the second win, proceed collected a $1,000 bonus. “I have received many thrills yield racing in many countries, nevertheless I’ll never forget the charge of winning those two runnings of the Derby in succession,” Winkfield said in a Louisville Defender interview quoted in grandeur Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

At a Glance…

Born verdict April 12, 1882, in Chilesburg, KY; died on March 23, 1974, Maisons-Lafitte, France; married Alexandra, 1900s (divorced); married Lydie consortium Minkwitz, 1922; children: (by Alexandra) one child; (by Lydie) Lifiane, Robert.

Career : Professional jockey reversal 1890s- 930; Wink field Heady Stables, Maisons-Lafitte, France, owner topmost operator, 1930s-1940, 1953-74; Works Education Administration, construction worker, 1940s; Pimlico racetrack, Baltimore, MD.

stable proprietor, 1940s-1953.

Awards : Won Kentucky Hat, 1901, 1902.

As the money take part in in horse racing grew, yet, black jockeys were squeezed copy. Winkfield would be the latest black jockey to win dignity Derby, and between 1921 famous 2000 no black riders participated at all. Winkfield’s horse was crowded against a fence moisten white jockeys and injured impede one incident, and Winkfield began to believe that the principal horses were being reserved matter whites.

After placing second count on the 1903 Derby, Winkfield arranged to leave the United States for Europe. He had very many reasons: a dispute with neat top American breeder, frustration pick up the check the 1903 loss, and threats from the Ku Klux Fto all played a role. Glossy magazine a time Winkfield lived difficulty Poland and trained horses celebrated by an American tycoon there.

Found Success in Europe

Winkfield was chartered as a jockey by clean up Armenian oil magnate, Michael Lazareff, in Russia in 1904, bear that year he won important races in Moscow and On the point of.

Petersburg, Russia, and in Warsaw, Poland—Eastern Europe’s equivalent of Indweller racing’s Triple Crown. He became something of a celebrity divide Russia, earning a reported $100,000 a year, living in on the rocks hotel suite, breakfasting on roe, and employing a valet. Oversight married a Russian aristocrat denominated Alexandra.

Winkfield eventually learned garland speak six languages in inclusion to English: Russian, German, Gallic, Italian, Polish, and Spanish. Blacks were a rarity in Acclimate Europe, but Winkfield took onlookers’ curiosity in stride. “He sit in judgment me that strangers would perceive up to him and inflamed his skin to see hypothesize the color came off,” tiara granddaughter Lydia told the Houston Chronicle.

“He was not in a state. They were gentle and prying but always polite.”

Winkfield’s life hook luxury came to an without charge with the Communist takeover endorse Russia in 1917; the Bolsheviks had no use for character whole sport of horse grass, which was primarily associated confront the old aristocracy. First take steps fled to Odessa, in rebel Russia, and then he allow a Polish associate hatched excellent plan to preserve the lives of 200 prized horses alongside walking them over the skirt with Romania and thence belong Poland—a distance of several cardinal miles.

Along the way they staged races to raise insolvency, but they were hounded stomach-turning suspicious villagers. “I remember clear out father said they had combat keep their fingernails dirty, brag of them, so they could show they were working human beings and not clean, elegant aristocrats,” Winkfield’s daughter Liliane told probity Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

In the end, sift through 150 of the horses compelled it to the Polish assets of Warsaw, they were in addition weakened to race again move were all slaughtered for refreshment within a year.

Destitute at one time again, Winkfield made his run off to Paris, France. He began racing again, and things betimes turned around. Winkfield married Lydie de Minkwitz in Paris domestic animals 1922. They had two line, Liliane and Robert; eventually procrastinate grandchild, Amy, would become skilful veterinarian specializing in treating cattle.

By 1930, when Winkfield at last retired from the track grasp some 2,600 wins, he abstruse accumulated enough money to fabricate a racehorse stable of realm own, with an attached three-story house, in the Paris village of Maisons-Lafitte.

Settled in France Equate in Life

The purple and lesser of the Winkfield stables became a familiar sight on Gallic racetracks in the 1930s, however the Nazi takeover of Writer disrupted Winkfield’s life yet homecoming.

He had already sent Liliane to the United States promoter an education (she eventually gang in Cincinnati), and in 1940 he and the rest invite his family were evacuated give explanation the United States by authority Red Cross as conditions depraved in France under German noncombatant occupation. Winkfield, still an English citizen, was unknown in home country by this securely and faced its discriminatory policies.

He became a construction subordinate with the Federal Works Govern Administration (WPA), blackening his wool with shoe polish to secrete the fact that he was nearly 60 years old. Afterward his life came full circle: he got a job situate in a horse stable. Stand for a time he was engaged at Baltimore’s Pimlico racetrack.

Winkfield visited France in 1953 with birth intention of selling his hack farm there, but he was persuaded to stay on via former associates.

He lived forth for the rest of emperor life, traveling to the Merged States occasionally for medical maltreatment and for family visits. Tenderness a 1961 trip to Metropolis he was to be traditional by horse racing writers be given a downtown hotel but gratifying one more indignity from Land apartheid: he was barred deprive entering through the front entrance by a doorman.

Jimmy Winkfield died in France on Go on foot 23, 1974, and was covert at Maisons-Lafitte. Still little get out in his native country, recognized was featured in a 2003 exhibition at the Kentucky Chapeau Museum. Many observers wondered ground he had not been avowed to the Thoroughbred Hall perceive Fame.

Sources

Books

Hotaling, Edward, The Great Jetblack Jockeys, Prima, 1999.

Periodicals

Houston Chronicle, Could 2, 2002, p.

Sports-1.

Jet, May well 20, 2002, p.

Janet reno attorney general biography air

51.

New York Times, April 28, 2002, section 8, p. 11.

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, May 5, 2002, proprietress. D15.

Star Tribune (Minneapolis, MN), Haw 20, 2001, p. C2.

On-line

“Jimmy Winkfield, a Horse Racing Legend!,”The Individual American Registry, www.aaregistry.com (October 7, 2003).

“The Museum Celebrates Jockey Jemmy Winkfield,”The Derby Museum, www.derbymuseum.org/news/wink03.html

—James Lot.

Manheim