On June 15, 1971, Cheryl White discovered herself at the starting gate at Thistledown Racetrack aboard a horse called Ace Reward. It was her first official raceand she had been extremely focused.
“I just wanted those gates to start,” she told me recently. “I wasn’t nervous and knew I would be out and get the guide.”
Cheryl was ideal. She took command in the 2,600, six-furlong event, and for nearly half the race, she looked like a winner. But Ace Reward and White would finish dead of 11 horses. Nonetheless, Cheryl White had made history with her ride, becoming the very first African-American female jockey of our time.
Cheryl grew up around horses and other critters.
“We moved into the country once I was very young, so I always recall being around horses and being really comfortable around them. And we’d all kinds other creatures,” she said.
White came from 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 places. Raymond started training horses toward the conclusion 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 ran at Thistledown.
Cheryl was thinking about becoming a jockey, and her parents were largely supportive.
“They encouraged me, but together with my dad being in the horse business, he was not exactly in favor of female riders,” she said. “My Dad was only old school and didn’t believe, like many old timers, that girls belonged across the racetrack. There was a time when girls weren’t even permitted on the backstretch after five o’clock. But my parents didn’t try to talk me out of it.”
White didn’t do any better in her second outing and ran dead again, but it didn’t faze her. She had been awarded an apprentice license on June 26, 1971, and 2 months later, it occurred. 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 USA.
White received sufficient attention to be encouraged to the”Boots and Bows Handicap,” an all-female riders race at Atlantic City in 1972. She won on the longest shot on the board in a field of 14. But the race was not without controversy, as fellow rider Mary Bacon was angry at White following the race and accused her of coming on her horse. But the two women were friends and eventually put the problem behind them.
White lasted riding in her recognizable circuit and held her own, but she wanted more. While visiting friends in California in 1974, she decided to ply her trade in the warm and sunny Southern California tracks. However, Santa Anita, Hollywood and Del Mar were just plain tough venues to compete , and several female riders found major success on the California circuit.
“I probably should’ve remained in the east instead of heading west,” she advised me. “I think the tracks on the East Coast and Midwest were more accepting of women riders, 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 in the western tracks. They simply wouldn’t have gotten the (great ) mounts as well as the chances that feminine jockeys had back east and west 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 out of the gate and has been in high demand on the California Fair circuit. She topped the rider standings and earned the Appaloosa Horse Club’s Jockey of the Year 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 same day after she rode a winner at Thistledown in Ohio at the day and scored again in the night 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 began making plans to find a simpler way to create a living. Back in 1991, she passed the California Horse Racing Board’s Steward Examination and rode her final race on July 25, 1992 at Los Alamitos and only happened to go out a winner. She is since served as a racing official in a variety of functions at several different racetracks. Since her retirement, White has ridden many times in charity events, competing with fellow retired female riders.
Today, White works thankfully as a placing estimate at Mahoning Valley Race Course in Ohio. She has a brother and nephew that have an advertising business, Kabango Media. It gives the household pleasure to observe the title of the company, as it had been called after one of Cheryl’s father’s favorite horses, Kabango.
Although it seems White was seriously underrated, she did get some awards and coverage. Back in 1994, she was honored as one of those”Successful African Americans at the Thoroughbred Racing Industry” by the Bluegrass Black Business Association in Lexington, Kentucky. She was also honored 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 livelihood in a couple of sentences.
“I had a long and relatively prosperous career winning 750 races. I got to retire on my terms and of my own choice and essentially in 1 piece. I was quite fortunate to have had a job that I loved and had a passion for. Many 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 trade it for anything.”
When I asked about any possible plans of retirement, Cheryl said,”Retire? Retire out of this? I had been a race track brat as a child, and I’m probably going to die on the trail!”
Cheryl White was a true pioneer in our game, and you can only imagine the challenges she dared to pursue her career. She was young and determined, ignored the drama 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’s truly 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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