Babe Ruth she was not! How could she be? She stood 4’ 10 1/2“ and weighed a mere 90 lbs. The babe’s girth was almost as legendary as his swing. So, why the comparison?
On August 20, 1993, Julie Krone accomplished a feat to rival the exploits of athletes in any number of arenas. In the modern era, Jordan and Gretzky come to mind. It is an event to compare with that summer’s incredible home run streak by Ken Griffey, Jr. The romance of baseball and the mystique of the Sport of Kings capture the imagination of writers and fans alike. Julie is in the company of the great ones. She has exploded from a gate that had sent her forth to the winner’s circle at the Belmont that spring, and brought her round two turns to the Racing Hall of Fame in August of 2000, as the first female inductee.
It was at Saratoga that Julie brought home five winners while riding only six mounts on a sloppy, rainy Friday in August. It was a day when fans suddenly turned longshots with names like Splasher or Sunken Fleet into near favorites. Julie put together a string of winners unmatched at the storied Spa oval since Ron Turcotte won five in one day in August of 1973. Angel Cordero had five winners on July 31, 1968, the only jockey to achieve this record in the entire history of the Saratoga meeting.
That might be enough of a story, but another event which occurred that day is as poignant as it is uplifting.
Early that morning, Julie agreed to meet a young fan and his family. Dean Schierhorst was a special 16-year-old with a major crush on Julie Krone. He suffered from spina bifida and scoliosis. Dean spent his life in a wheelchair without the use of his legs. He was also a vibrant, happy, colorful young man who brightened the lives of everyone he met.
On that day, he met Julie – the same Julie he had been rooting for every day on Sports Channel. Meeting her was a birthday present from Mrs. J.H. Whitney who owns Greentree Stables. Dean’s dad works for the Whitney family as chauffer. Dean later said meeting Julie Krone made him feel like he “was on a runaway train with no conductor.”
For his birthday present, Julie not only met Dean and his family, but also spent some private time with him, writing a personal message and autograph in the Julie Krone biography that he brought along. Near the end of their time together, Julie told Dean that she would win one for him. She more than kept her promise.
In the most recent film mythologizing Babe Ruth’s life, John Goodman’s portrayal exposes some flaws which dull the finish on the legendary bronze for the most famous Bronx Bomber. One scene, however, is reminiscent of the much earlier, more sanitized Bill Bendix version of the Babe’s life. It is the hospital bedside promise to little Johnny Sylvester, that, “I’ll hit two for ya!” Get out the handkerchief, please.
That’s Hollywood! Julie’s meeting was real life. What is significant here is the element of motivation. The true meaning of the word is elusive. Educators try to harness it. C.E.O.s try to instill it in all levels of their corporate staff. Athletes may understand the drive to succeed best but cannot explain every factor.
What makes an athlete a winner consistently? It is constant practice of the fundamentals – or maybe adrenalin – that pumped-up feeling that seems to affect streak players in baseball, basketball, or hockey, among others.
More difficult still, how do you explain how motivation works for thoroughbreds? Horse racing is like no other sport because the adrenalin may certainly affect the jockey, but what about the horse? At that time in New York, Lasix and other performance-enhancing drugs were banned – so much for an artificial high for the animal. Conceding that, many horses react to the crowd and the excitement and the competitive spirit that a track provides, the ability to understand what makes a certain horse tick is what makes some of us handicappers or trainers of note and the rest of us “also rans.”
Anyone close to horses will tell you of the marriage of horse and rider. Bettors at the track often pay more attention to the jockey than the horse despite the obvious fact that it is the horse who does the running. Still, certain horses win consistently with one jockey and not with others.
This theory might explain one winning race on Julie Krone’s state of six mounts on August 20th. Two winners is a great day. Three is fantastic! Julie hit on five! That’s motivation. If her horse wasn’t scratched in the 10th race, the potential loomed for setting a new record rather than matching one from twenty years earlier.
Maybe this sounds sappy, but if it wasn’t for Johnny Sylvester, perhaps the “Sultan of Swat” wouldn’t have hit the second home run that fabled day in Yankee Stadium. As for Julie…a multiplicity of factors had to come together for such a feat to occur. The conditions had to be right. Every horse she rode had to be fit and ready, and she had to be at the peak of preparation. Some of these factors may be measured, but there are always other undeterminable ones when legends occur. Perhaps God smiled down on one very special young man named Dean on Friday, August 20th, and on a rainy day and a muddy track gave Julie and, in a way, Dean himself, a rarified moment in the sun.
Babe she is not, but on that day, to the horseracing world, she is more.
By the time she had retired in 1999, she had won 3,545 races and more that $81,000,000 in prizes.
Julie’s final farewell as a jockey took place on September 3, 2015. Then 48 years old, for a single charity race at Donchester Race Course in the United Kingdom, Julie emerged from retirement to ride “Invisible Horse” to win by 3-and-a-half-lengths. This gave her a total of 3,307 winning mounts.
Dean Schierhorst, Julie’s big fan, died on December 29, 1996 in New York. His surviving parents, David and Linda, live in Seacliff, Long Island, retired from Greentree Stables. Zachary, his brother, named his son Dean.
