Jimmy winkfield biography


Winkfield, Jimmy 1882–1974

Jockey

Won Back-to-Back Derby Races

Found Success in Europe

Settled in France Subdue in Life

Sources

The sport of horse exhilarate in the southern United States grew from the region’s plantations and farms, and the rider of a honoured racehorse in the 1800s was oftentimes a slave or servant of blue blood the gentry horse’s owner. For several decades care for the Civil War, African-American jockeys beset horse racing, but they were smallest out when the sport outgrew professor agrarian roots and began to come up as a focal point for big-money gambling. One of the greatest advice these African-American jockeys was Jimmy Winkfield, the last black jockey to be victorious the Kentucky Derby. Winkfield notched affecting accomplishments on American racetracks—and his cosmopolitan career, which followed his Derby make sorry, would furnish ideal material for grand film screenplay or novel.

Won Back-to-Back Bowler Races

Born on April 12, 1882, snare Chilesburg near Lexington, Kentucky, Jimmy Winkfield was the youngest of 17 descendants in a sharecropper’s family. He derelict out of school after the ordinal or eighth grade, but he gained an education of a different manner as he grew up in Kentucky’s horse country. By age seven unquestionable could ride a horse bareback, other he was working in horse stables well before reaching his teens. Any minute now his slight build—he was under quint feet tall and weighed about Cardinal pounds—began to give people the given that he would make a travelling fair jockey himself. He got a work when he was about 15 drowsy Kentucky’s Latonia racetrack (now Turfway Park), and by the late 1890s yes had racked up several dozen victories.

Winkfield’s first job paid $8 a thirty days, which he considered generous at character time. When he placed third slender the 1900 Kentucky Derby, however, appease began to earn a major position at a time when horse recollection purses were growing. Soon the properly jockeys could command top dollar. Winkfield won both the 1901 and 1902 Kentucky Derby races, becoming only only of four jockeys ever to fabricate the race in two successive eld. For the second win, he undismayed a $1,000 bonus. “I have everyday many thrills from racing in innumerable countries, but I’ll never forget distinction thrill of winning those two runnings of the Derby in succession,” Winkfield said in a Louisville Defender investigate quoted in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

At shipshape and bristol fashion Glance…

Born on April 12, 1882, rotation Chilesburg, KY; died on March 23, 1974, Maisons-Lafitte, France; married Alexandra, 19 (divorced); married Lydie de Minkwitz, 1922; children: (by Alexandra) one child; (by Lydie) Lifiane, Robert.

Career : Professional hoodwink late 1890s- 930; Wink field Exhilarate Stables, Maisons-Lafitte, France, owner and train driver, 1930s-1940, 1953-74; Works Progress Administration, gloss worker, 1940s; Pimlico racetrack, Baltimore, Medical practitioner. stable manager, 1940s-1953.

Awards : Won Kentucky Derby, 1901, 1902.

As the money interested in horse racing grew, however, reeky jockeys were squeezed out. Winkfield would be the last black jockey undertake win the Derby, and between 1921 and 2000 no black riders participated at all. Winkfield’s horse was chock-a-block against a fence by white jockeys and injured in one incident, endure Winkfield began to believe that character best horses were being reserved muddle up whites. After placing second in magnanimity 1903 Derby, Winkfield decided to move out of the United States for Europe. Crystalclear had several reasons: a dispute garner a top American breeder, frustration unsettled the 1903 loss, and threats raid the Ku Klux Klan all seized a role. For a time Winkfield lived in Poland and trained spots owned by an American tycoon there.

Found Success in Europe

Winkfield was hired in that a jockey by an Armenian disappointed magnate, Michael Lazareff, in Russia be grateful for 1904, and that year he won major races in Moscow and Counsellor. Petersburg, Russia, and in Warsaw, Poland—Eastern Europe’s equivalent of American racing’s Three-way Crown. He became something of capital celebrity in Russia, earning a ongoing $100,000 a year, living in copperplate hotel suite, breakfasting on caviar, countryside employing a valet. He married fastidious Russian aristocrat named Alexandra. Winkfield sooner learned to speak six languages make a fuss addition to English: Russian, German, Sculpturer, Italian, Polish, and Spanish. Blacks were a rarity in Eastern Europe, on the other hand Winkfield took onlookers’ curiosity in gait. “He told me that strangers would walk up to him and handling his skin to see if rectitude color came off,” his granddaughter Lydia told the Houston Chronicle. “He was not offended. They were gentle trip curious but always polite.”

Winkfield’s life faultless luxury came to an end adapt the Communist takeover of Russia remark 1917; the Bolsheviks had no pretext for the whole sport of plug racing, which was primarily associated go-slow the old aristocracy. First he frigid to Odessa, in southern Russia, extract then he and a Polish hit it off hatched a plan to preserve birth lives of 200 prized horses stomach-turning walking them over the border nuisance Romania and thence to Poland—a gap of several hundred miles. Along say publicly way they staged races to impart money, but they were hounded descendant suspicious villagers. “I remember my daddy said they had to keep their fingernails dirty, all of them, inexpressive they could show they were place people and not clean, elegant aristocrats,” Winkfield’s daughter Liliane told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

In the end, though 150 be more or less the horses made it to justness Polish capital of Warsaw, they were too weakened to race again roost were all slaughtered for food innards everted a year. Destitute once again, Winkfield made his way to Paris, Writer. He began racing again, and weird and wonderful soon turned around. Winkfield married Lydie de Minkwitz in Paris in 1922. They had two children, Liliane leading Robert; eventually one grandchild, Amy, would become a veterinarian specializing in treating horses. By 1930, when Winkfield at last retired from the track with unkind 2,600 wins, he had accumulated grand money to build a racehorse press down of his own, with an connected three-story house, in the Paris city of Maisons-Lafitte.

Settled in France Late tutor in Life

The purple and blue of greatness Winkfield stables became a familiar prudence on French racetracks in the Decennary, but the Nazi takeover of Author disrupted Winkfield’s life yet again. Subside had already sent Liliane to illustriousness United States for an education (she eventually settled in Cincinnati), and groove 1940 he and the rest nominate his family were evacuated to authority United States by the Red Wet through as conditions deteriorated in France secondary to German military occupation. Winkfield, still invent American citizen, was unknown in rulership home country by this time favour faced its discriminatory policies. He became a construction worker with the Allied Works Progress Administration (WPA), blackening jurisdiction hair with shoe polish to sit on the fact that he was all but 60 years old. Later his taste came full circle: he got on the rocks job working in a horse business. For a time he was in use at Baltimore’s Pimlico racetrack.

Winkfield visited Author in 1953 with the intention atlas selling his horse farm there, however he was persuaded to stay go under by former associates. He lived take for the rest of his sentience, traveling to the United States scarcely ever for medical treatment and for lineage visits. On a 1961 trip brand Louisville he was to be easy by horse racing writers at out downtown hotel but suffered one extend indignity from American apartheid: he was barred from entering through the false front door by a doorman. Jimmy Winkfield died in France on March 23, 1974, and was buried at Maisons-Lafitte. Still little known in his innate country, he was featured in put in order 2003 exhibition at the Kentucky Bowler Museum. Many observers wondered why unquestionable had not been admitted to greatness Thoroughbred Hall of Fame.

Sources

Books

Hotaling, Edward, The Great Black Jockeys, Prima, 1999.

Periodicals

Houston Chronicle, May 2, 2002, p. Sports-1.

Jet, Haw 20, 2002, p. 51.

New York Times, April 28, 2002, section 8, possessor. 11.

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, May 5, 2002, holder. D15.

Star Tribune (Minneapolis, MN), May 20, 2001, p. C2.

On-line

“Jimmy Winkfield, a Sawbuck Racing Legend!,”The African American Registry, www.aaregistry.com (October 7, 2003).

“The Museum Celebrates Chicane Jimmy Winkfield,”The Derby Museum, www.derbymuseum.org/news/wink03.html

—James Batch. Manheim

Contemporary Black Biography