Hail, rider

Krone's comeback from fear a wonder to behold

Beautiful late January afternoon in Southern California, warm and dry, a touch of sunlight breaking through the haze. Julie Krone, the pixie who persevered to become a Hall of Fame jockey, is bounding through the near empty paddock at Santa Anita Park, still fresh after riding in her ninth and final race of the day.

She’s laughing, bantering with fellow jockeys after a bumpy ride on the turf.

This is a wondrous sight to catch. Not just the smells and scents of the horse track with the San Gabriel Mountains lurking in the distance, but a comeback against perhaps our rawest of emotions -- fear. You sense that this is different from the seemingly limitless number of boxing champs or basketball icons who’ve ventured out of retirement.

At 39, Krone is back in horse racing, a sport that nearly beat her to death, mentally and physically. When she quit in 1999 after a few horrific spills, she was suffering anxiety attacks. She could no longer rationalize the risks of riding a fragile, 1,000-pound animal at 35 mph in swerving traffic. Doubts and anxieties besieged her.

She felt suicidal, at times.

The last time I'd seen Krone, about a year or so after she retired, I and a psychologist friend, Jay Barrish, spent a day with her talking about her fears. She led us through the gruesome injuries, the snapped leg, the horse stampeding over her -- and stepping on her heart.

Her explanation of how she persevered was always: “Selective amnesia."

I remember her replaying a video tape from a spill at Saratoga, which put her out of commission for nine months. On the tape, she's perched like a piece of porcelain statuary aboard Seattle Way. The next instant, the thoroughbred stumbles, Krone is cartwheeling over the top and bouncing to the Bermuda turf like a rag doll.

“It looks like a war move, doesn’t it?’’ laughed Krone, animated and alive. “Look, I never moved my right leg or my left arm, and that is just what I hurt. I can pull my goggles up. ... But oh God, it hurt so bad. It was terrible."

Through all the spills, the broken bones and concussions, the woman had been fearless. But after the Saratoga experience, coupled with another spill in 1994 at Gulfstream Park, Krone was a mental wreck and she was physically broken.

“I just was terrified of riding," she told us. “I lost my magical touch with horses. I was having anxiety attacks every day. ... And then I started riding badly and everybody said, “What’s going on? Why did you back out of that spot [along the rail]?’

“All the skills that I used my whole life, like dedication, persistence, pushing bad things into the back of your mind, little victories -- they didn’t work in this new world. The weirdest things were going on. I would be on streets that I knew most of my life and I’d have no idea where I was. Every single thing I did was just so, so terrifying. Riding, talking to people. Like anticipation of, ‘If I do that, something bad will happen.'"

She described herself as being in “outer space" by the time she and her ride were positioned in the starting gate. The horse often sensed her anxiety after breaking from the gate, and performed accordingly.

Counseling and prescription medication eventually helped her manage the anxiety. The last day she rode, she brought home three winners. So she retired. And eventually became the first woman inducted into the National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame in Saratoga.

Since that summer day two years ago, Krone, once a fixture on the East Coast, has moved to California, landing an analyst gig on cable TV and marrying racing columnist Jay Hovdey. Last summer, she ventured deeper into the sport, galloping horses in the early mornings at Del Mar for trainer Richard Mandella.

“I started liking getting on horses," she says, reflecting after a long day at Santa Anita. “I started slowly so I could be sure I made the right decision. I probably spent six months working out.

“Now that I’ve returned, it’s not tough. It’s like I never missed a thing."

Only the fear and anxiety have been left behind.

Mike Fish is a senior writer for CNNSI.com.

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