Diane Crump, the 1st female jockey to ride in Kentucky Derby, dies at 77

Diane Crump, who in 1969 became the first woman to ride professionally in a horse race and a year later became the first female jockey in the Kentucky Derby, has died. She was 77.

Crump was diagnosed in October with an aggressive form of brain cancer and died Thursday night in hospice care in Winchester, Virginia, her daughter, Della Payne, told The Associated Press.

Crump went on to win 228 races before riding her last race in 1998, a month shy of her 50th birthday and nearly 30 years after her trailblazing ride at Hialeah Park in Florida on Feb. 7, 1969.

Crump was among several women to fight successfully at the time to be granted a jockey license, but they still needed a trainer willing to put them in a race and then for the race to run. Others were thwarted when male jockeys boycotted or threatened to boycott if a woman was riding.

Photographs of Crump's walk to the saddling area at Hialeah show her protected by security guards as a crowd pressed in on all sides. Six of the original 12 jockeys in the race had refused to ride, Mark Shrager wrote in his biography, "Diane Crump: A Horse Racing Pioneer's Life in the Saddle." Among them were future legends Angel Cordero Jr., Jorge Velasquez and Ron Turcotte, who four years later would ride Secretariat to win the Triple Crown.

But other jockeys stepped up, and as the 12 horses made their way onto the track, the bugler skipped the traditional call to the post and instead played "Smile for Me, My Diane." Crump, on a 50-1 longshot called Bridle 'n Bit, finished 10th, but the barrier had been broken. A month later, Bridle 'n Bit gave Crump her first victory at Gulfstream Park.

She again made history in 1970 by becoming the first woman to ride in the Kentucky Derby. She won the