First female Kentucky Derby jockey Diane Crump dead at 77

Clark Jr., the grandson of explorer William Clark, founded the Kentucky Derby and Churchill Downs in the aftermath of the Civil War. The race became part of the nation’s healing process, though Clark Jr. died and never witnessed the Derby's growth.

Diane Crump, the first woman to compete in the Kentucky Derby as a jockey, died this week at the age of 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.

In 1969, she became the first woman to ride professionally in a horse race and, a year later, she became the first female jockey in the Kentucky Derby. It would be 14 more years before another woman would ride in the event. 

Only four others have raced in it since then. 

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Crump won 228 races before 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 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.

The president of Churchill Downs Racetrack, Mike Anderson, said in a statement Friday that Crump "will be forever respected and fondly remembered in horse racing lore."

He noted that Crump, who had been riding since age 5 and galloping young thoroughbreds since she was a teenager, "was an iconic trailblazer who admirably fulfilled her childhood dreams."

FAMED HORSE RACING JOCKEY WHO RODE THE LEGENDARY SECRETARIAT