"Rosie Napravnik is a good bet to become the first woman ever to win the Kentucky Derby. It's going to happen, and probably soon, given the trends in racing and the sport's awakening to gender's competitive insignificance, that a woman rides a horse into the Churchill Downs winner's circle and then gracefully accepts into her arms the famed blanket of roses."

"... the Amesbury native knows first-hand that life can become derailed when least expected. Having established herself as a solid journeyman rider in a talented jockey colony that included Carl Gambardella and Rudy Baez in the late ’80s while riding under her maiden name as Tammi Campbell, she seemed destined to become a star. However, a recurring case of viral meningitis interrupted that rise to stardom on several occasions while triggering a decade of more debilitating problems that nearly took her life.

“I’ve been blessed this year. This is the best decade of my life.”

"Piermarini, 44, originally from Salisbury, began her racing career at Suffolk in 1985 as an apprentice jockey. Over the course of 26 years, three pregnancies, repeated bouts of debilitating spinal meningitis, and upward of $17 million in purse winnings, she diligently has carved out one of the sport’s more impressive careers for a woman. Not that she really considers 'for a woman' to be a necessary qualifier in the overall discussion of her time in the saddle, because she now has exactly 14,206 races and, oh, the odd dustup in the jocks room with some of her brothers is ample evidence that she considers her sport a level playing field."

"Some Hollywood Park racing officials, jockeys and valets had to attend a 'mandatory' sexual harassment seminar earlier this month after an incident involving jockey Chantal Sutherland, Southern California racing steward Tom Ward said."

“Now in saying that, I still get all the time a trainer or maybe an owner that doesn’t really want to ride a girl,” she said. “You’re going up to this person every morning, shaking their hand, trying to get your foot in the door, and you’re just getting no reaction. You can tell it’s a sexist thing. I’ll ask my agent, ‘Is this guy just not going to ride me because I’m a girl?’ And he’ll say, ‘Yeah, probably.’ I never really took offense to it. I know it’s out there. There’s really no other way to deal with it but hope you can beat them in a race and get their attention.”

"Outside the ring of people pressing to get close to her and beyond the insistent clamor of the television cameras, there arose cries of 'Rosie.' And there she stood, in the middle of the turbulence, smiling somewhat sheepishly, as if not entirely comfortable with the attention and the outpouring of congratulatory emotion, horse racing's latest, if somewhat unexpected, star ..."

"... it is just possible that the purging of a couple of soccer bores has not quite brought an end to British misogyny and I wonder if there might be other sports that should be responding to this development with a bit of introspection. Racing, for example. I dare say I'm a terrible old communist who would be buried alive by a right-thinking society, but it strikes me that there might perhaps be the odd lingering trace of prejudice against women within our little world. At the very least, there are surely some questions to answer."

"Clyde Rice measured his response before speaking it. He told her, 'That career would be a lot easier if you were one of my sons.' Having no more than one Breeders' Cup runner in 2010 validates just how much harder it can be for a woman."

"The headline is startling and attention grabbing, but anyone on the backside of a racetrack or deep within the infrastructure of the breeding business knows that frequently women are subjected to treatment by men -- including violence -- that they wouldn’t face as blatantly on the “front side” of the game."

"Finishing the season with 71 victories, Baze became the first woman in the 52-year history of the Downs to capture the leading jockey title.... Oddly enough, [Janine] Stianson, who battled Baze neck-and-neck throughout the season, was shut out of the winner's circle yesterday." Stianson finished third. The jockey race almost ended with female riders running 1-2 for the first time in thoroughbred racing history.

"By winning the one-mile Acorn, the 1 1/8-mile Mother Goose and now the grueling 1 1/2-mile Oaks on her father's speedy filly. Mom's Command, [Abigail Fuller] had become the first female jockey to sweep the New York triple Crown for 3-year-old fillies. And Mom's Command became only the sixth filly to accomplish the feat, joining Dark Mirage, Shuvee, Chris Evert, Ruffian and Davona Dale."

"For the second successive Saturday, women trainers saddled the winners of the day's two biggest horse races. This weekend it was Venetia Williams and Henrietta Knight, the week before it was Williams and Sue Smith who snaffled the major prizes on a day when Mary Reveley sent out her 1,000th winner. Such success invites little comment these days; after all, women trainers have won races as diverse as the Grand National and French Derby, with many a canny handicap success in between. However, the extraordinary fact is that just 33 years ago there were no women trainers. Back in 1966, when Jenny Pitman was a harassed housewife raising two sons, women were not permitted to hold licences to train racehorses." (The Independent, 1999)

1974 Sports Illustrated profile of Denise Boudrot. "As soon as the mutuels open there is a quick drop in odds -- the housewife money coming in -- then a leveling off till the very end, and another drop, the smart money. But if the fans are creating false favorites for her, and if the four-letter gutter word for woman ricochets about the grandstand when she loses, Denise remains a most popular rider. 'Go home and have a baby' is about the most pointed remark she ever hears."

Remembering Denise Boudrot. "But more than once she did ride to beat the boys. In 1974, in what was billed as the 'Contest of the Sexes' -- an echo of the Bobby Riggs-Billie Jean King tennis match of 1973 -- she raced and beat jockey Mike Lapensee at Lincoln Downs in Rhode Island. A week later, the jockeys swapped horses and she beat him again."

A pioneer passes. "She won more than 1,000 races, including the breakthrough 94 victories in 92 days at Suffolk Downs in East Boston in 1974, earning praise as the Longshot Lady and Johnny Longden in Skirts from one handicapper."

"Rubin retired from racing 41 years ago, just one year after she made the record books at 19 years old as the first female jockey to win a race against a man on Feb. 22, 1969, at Charles Town in West Virginia. Her first U.S. race and win was aboard the horse Cohesion." Now 60, she's preparing to ride in the first-ever Retired Female Jockey Legends race at Pimlico on May 14.