He was on his approach to changing into America’s best black race rider. He was one among solely six folks to win the Kentucky Derby (1901-1902), narrowly lacking out on a 3rd win the next 12 months.
However the story of James “Wink” Winkfield as an excellent horseman is simply a small a part of his existence. Is there any jockey who has lived a extra fantastic life?
Within the early 1900s, a mixture of massive cash, violence from white jockeys, and threats from the Ku Klux Klan drove nice African American jockeys out of racing. Winkfield, who had solely been an expert jockey for 5 years, purchased a steamer ticket on the finish of 1903 and headed to Russia with solely a Russian/Polish/English dictionary. He recurrently rode successful horses in Russia, Poland, France, Austria, Hungary, England, Spain, and Italy, and finally gained virtually each well-known race on the continent. He was additionally praised within the sports activities and gossip press.
In 1919, Winkfield led a gaggle of 250 main thoroughbreds, Polish aristocrats, and horsemen on a harrowing 1,100-mile journey to the secure haven of Warsaw, escaping the roaring Bolshevik cannons.
Winkfield revived his profession in France in 1922. The daddy-in-law gifted the newlyweds a three-story chateau and personal stables within the lush countryside exterior Paris. When the Nazis stormed the compound in 1941, Winkfield used a pitchfork to guard himself. Sixty years after his first Kentucky Derby victory, Winkfield returned to America and found a legend virtually forgotten in his homeland.
Winkfield was born in 1880 in Chilesburg, Kentucky, the youngest of 17 youngsters in a sharecropper household. The son of slaves, Winkfield cut up his early years between each day chores on the farm and watching herds of thoroughbreds parade alongside the farm’s dusty trails. He watched the gifted jockeys do their factor via the fences that dotted the Bluegrass racetrack.
Winkfield dreamed of changing into a jockey and following within the footsteps of well-known black jockeys like Isaac Murphy, who in 1891 grew to become the primary jockey to win back-to-back Kentucky Derbys and was in search of his third victory. On the age of 15, Winkfield left the farm to work as a stablehand on the Latonia racetrack and progressed into horse athletics. He earned $8 a month, plus meals.
“I used to be wealthy,” he later boasted.
Winkfield first rode for jockey Joe at Chicago’s Hawthorne Race Course. It was a catastrophe. Peter Chu, writer of The Kentucky Derby: The First 100 Years, describes the scene this fashion: “When the fourth horse went off the rail, he went straight throughout the trail of the within three and was approaching the rail – and all 4 horses fell. The stewards additionally demoted Winkfield for a 12 months.”
Winkfield reached the Kentucky Derby in 1900 with Slive, ending third. He returned in 1901 and first led the Prince of Wales throughout the end line at Churchill Downs. He repeated this feat in 1902 at Arran a Dale. He rode Early within the 1903 version and completed second by three-quarters of a size. No jockey has ever surpassed the Derby file. He gained two out of 4 appearances, and positioned second and third within the others.
At simply 21 years outdated, Winkfield was a brash, daring rider who was extremely wanted. After that, his life modified dramatically. “Wink” broke a verbal settlement with influential Thoroughbred proprietor John Madden and selected to trip one other man’s horse in the identical race. Madden vowed that the jockey would by no means trip for anybody once more in New York. On the similar time, horse racing was changing into virtually solely the protect of white jockeys.
When a proposal got here to trip horses in Tsarist Russia, Winkfield traveled to Europe after which to Russia. European aristocrats and rich oil tycoons owned high horses and raced them at racetracks in Moscow and St. Petersburg. Winkfield gained the Moscow Derby a number of occasions, together with using four-time winner Bahadur, and raced with nice success in Austria and Germany for a few years.
Winkfield acquired a King’s Ransom of $100,000 a 12 months. He purchased a set in Moscow’s luxurious Nationwide Lodge, the place he employed a white servant. He ate caviar for breakfast and drank classic wine. His mates included millionaires and court docket nobles of Tsar Nicholas II.
Winkfield’s genteel life didn’t final lengthy. By 1917, the Bolsheviks and Communists had come to energy and horse racing started to shut down. Winkfield and his racing neighborhood moved to Odessa on the Black Sea. However quickly Winkfield was on the run once more.
He led 250 thoroughbreds, Polish noblemen, and horsemen overland throughout the Transylvanian Alps to Poland. Throughout their three-month nightmare journey, that they had no meals and villagers robbed them. Immediately, the identical horse bloodlines that Winkfield rescued are a few of Europe’s best stallions.
After beginning his using profession in Poland, a former Russian patron introduced Winkfield to France in 1922. There, Winkfield married his third spouse, Russian Baroness Lydia de Minkiewicz, and began a horse racing steady within the historic city of Maisons Lafitte, 18 miles exterior Paris. He spoke fluent French and have become a gourmand on the Paris racing scene, sharing the highlight with Ernest Hemingway, Josephine Baker, and royalty from world wide.
By the age of 48, the bodily pressure of using pressured him to retire, however Winkfield started a profitable profession as a trainee in 1930. Ten years later, when Adolf Hitler’s troops invaded France, they requisitioned all his horses, stables, and residential. Winkfield fled once more, this time returning to America.
Few folks knew or cared about his racing historical past. The one job he bought from racing was as a stablehand. Bored with his second-class citizen standing, Winkfield returned to Maisons Lafitte in 1953, the place he ran one of the vital profitable horse racing stables of the Fifties and Nineteen Sixties.
In Could 1961, Winkfield returned to the USA for his closing go to, attending the Kentucky Derby for the primary time since 1903. Winkfield and her daughter Lillian have been invited to a reception she hosted. sports activities illustrated A ceremony was held on the luxurious Brown Lodge in Louisville, Kentucky to honor the two-time champion. Nonetheless segregated, the black doorman wouldn’t permit Winkfield to enter via the entrance door. Winkfield stood his floor. Finally they have been hospitalized. The visitors on the banquet ignored them.
That’s, aside from Roscoe Goose. Goose, a white jockey, gained the Derby at Donnellaire in 1913, setting the longest successful file in Derby historical past with 91 wins and one loss. He seen Winkfield and sat down on the desk. Three days later, on the day of the derby, the 2 met once more. “Wink” was sporting a classy pinstripe go well with and fedora hat. They smoked cigars and instructed tales to native reporters.
As soon as Winkfield had earned sufficient cash, he returned to Maisons Lafitte. In his later years, he struggled to stroll with the assistance of two canes to strengthen his physique, which lasted almost 92 years. He died on March 23, 1974 and was buried within the city cemetery. It concluded a guide a few life and profession that was one of many best of the twentieth century.
Thirty years after Winkfield died, he acquired his reward. He’s the third African American jockey to be inducted into the U.S. Horse Racing Corridor of Fame. The award went to his daughter, Lillian Winkfield Casey. Every year, Aqueduct hosts the six-furlong Jimmy Winkfield Stakes. This can be a becoming tribute to the final black jockey to win the Kentucky Derby.
Word: This text was initially revealed in September 2014.
