Aqueduct honors one of the greatest African-American jockeys of all-time with
Monday’s $75,000 Jimmy Winkfield S. Formerly run as the Best Turn, the
six-furlong sprint features a field of six three-year-olds. Grade 3 hero PRIMAL
STORM (Storm Boot), Dancing Count S. winner MORE SMOKE (Smoke Glacken) and
Tremont S. victor GOLD JOY (Joyeux Danseur) are among the top contenders.
Born in Kentucky in 1880, Winkfield rose from shoeshine boy to stable hand to
exercise rider to one of America’s top jockeys, winning back-to-back runnings of
the Kentucky Derby in 1901-02 and finishing second in the 1903 edition. Dogged
by racism in the United States, Winkfield went to Russia where he became the top
athlete in the country’s only national sport and married an heiress. He had to
flee Russia during the Bolshevik revolution, settled in France and trained
horses there and in Germany until forced to escape Western Europe due to the
Nazi invasion in the 1940s. He relocated to the United States and died outside
Paris, Kentucky, in 1974 at the age of 94.
The cast for the Winkfield, from the rail with riders and weights, is MADDY’S
LION (Lion Hearted), Pablo Fragoso, 116; LIEUTENANT DANZ (Gold Fever), Shaun
Bridgmohan, 116; Gold Joy, Mike Luzzi, 122; Primal Storm, Stewart Elliott, 122;
More Smoke, Rafael Bejarano, 120; and SMOKIN FOREST (Forestry), Richard Migliore,
120.