On June 15, 1971, Cheryl White found herself at the starting gate at Thistledown Racetrack aboard a horse called Ace Reward. It had been her first official race, and she had been extremely focused.
“I just needed those gates to open,” she informed me recently. “I was not nervous and knew I would be first out and get the lead.”
Cheryl was right. She took command in the $2,600, six-furlong occasion, and for almost half the race, she seemed like a winner. However, Ace Reward and White would finish dead of 11 horses. However, Cheryl White had made history with her ride, getting the very first African American female jockey of the time.
Cheryl grew up around horses and other creatures that were hundreds of.
“We moved to the country when I was very young, so I recall being about horses and being very comfortable around them. And we’d all types other animals,” she said.
White came from good racing stock. Her dad, Raymond, started his career as a jockey in Omaha, Nebraska, in 1924 and rode in Chicago, Cleveland and Cincinnati, among other areas. Raymond began training horses toward the end of the riding career as well as conditioned two horses that ran in the Kentucky Derby. Cheryl’s mother, Doris, was an owner whose horse often conducted at Thistledown.
Cheryl was interested in becoming a jockey, and her parents were mostly supportive.
“They invited me, but with my father being in the horse business, he was not just in favor of female riders,” she said. “My Dad was just old school and didn’t think, like many old timers, that women belonged across the racetrack. There was a time when women were not even allowed on the backstretch after five o’clock. But my parents didn’t attempt to talk me out of it.”
White did not do any better in her next outing and ran dead last again, but it did not faze her. She had been granted an apprentice license on June 26, 1971, and two months later, it happened. White rode her first winner on September 2, 1971 in Waterford Park to a horse called Jetolara, becoming the first black woman to win a thoroughbred horse race in the United States.
White received sufficient attention to be invited to the”Boots and Bows Handicap,” an all-female riders race in Atlantic City in 1972. She won on the longest shot on the plank in a field of 14. However, the race wasn’t without controversy, as fellow riders Mary Bacon was mad at White after the race and accused her of coming on her horse. But the two girls were friends and eventually put the issue behind them.
White continued riding in her familiar circuit and held her own, but she needed more. While visiting friends in California in 1974, she decided to ply her trade at the warm and sunny Southern California tracks. However, Santa Anita, Hollywood and Del Mar were just plain rough places to compete , and several female riders found major success on the California circuit.
“I probably should have remained in the east rather than heading west,” she advised me. “I feel the tracks on the East Coast and Midwest were more accepting of women cyclists, at least thoroughbred-wise. There were always five or six in any track I was at. Successful female jockeys on the East Coast, well, I don’t believe they would’ve done too at the western tracks. They simply wouldn’t have gotten the (great ) mounts and the opportunities that feminine jockeys had back east and in the Midwest.”
White shifted her attention to riding Quarter Horses, Paints and Appaloosas in the California County Fairs. She had a reputation for being fast from the gate and has been in high demand on the California Fair circuit. She topped the rider standings and got the Appaloosa Horse Club’s Jockey of the Year in 1977, 1983, 1984 and 1985 and has been inducted into the Appaloosa Hall of Fame at 2011.
Cheryl White also became the first female jockey to win two races in two distinct states on precisely the exact same day when she rode a winner at Thistledown in Ohio at the afternoon and scored again in the evening at Waterford Park in West Virginia. She was also the first female jockey to win five races in one day, accomplishing that feat at Fresno Fair.
In 1989, White dislocated her hip and started making plans to find a simpler way to create a living. In 1991, she handed the California Horse Racing Board’s Steward Examination and rode her last race on July 25, 1992 in Los Alamitos and only happened to go out a winner. She’s since served as a racing official in a variety of roles at many distinct racetracks. Since her retirement, White has ridden many times in charity events, competing with fellow retired female cyclists.
Now, White works thankfully as a putting judge at Mahoning Valley Race Course in Ohio. She has a brother and nephew who have an advertising firm, Kabango Media. It gives the family pleasure to observe the name of the company, as it was named after one of Cheryl’s dad’s beloved horses, Kabango.
Although it seems White was seriously underrated, she’d get some awards and coverage. Back in 1994, she was honored as one of those”Successful African Americans at the Thoroughbred Racing Industry” from the Bluegrass Black Business Association in Lexington, Kentucky. She was respected by the National Girls and Women in Sports Day, presented by the Amateur Athletic Foundation of Los Angeles, California in 2006.
I asked Cheryl if she could sum up her career in a couple of sentences.
“I had quite a long and relatively prosperous career winning 750 races. I must retire on my terms and of my own choice and basically in 1 piece. I had been quite fortunate to have had a job that I loved and had a passion for. A lot of individuals just aren’t that lucky. It has been a long road, but it’s been a fascinating and very lucrative and fun road,” she said. “I would not exchange it for anything.”
When I asked about any probable strategies of retirement, Cheryl said,”Retire? Retire out of this? I was a race track brat for a child, and I’m probably going to expire on the track!”
Cheryl White was a real pioneer in our sport, and you can just imagine the hurdles she overcame to pursue her career. She had been young and determined, ignored the play and the bigots, and only put her head down and rode. She paved the way for many individuals to pursue their own dreams, both on and off the racetrack.
It is really fitting that Cheryl White went out a winner in her final race, as she is surely a winner in my book.
Read more here: http://blackpresident.us/?p=61468
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