Rubin, Barbara Jo (1949—)

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Rubin, Barbara Jo (1949—)

American jockey. Born in Highland, Illinois, on November 21, 1949.

Was the first female jockey to defeat male riders in a major race in Florida (1969); won many races and became a media star for four years before injury forced her retirement.

"I have seen the greatest jockeys in the country since 1913 and not one has a better style," wrote Willie Ratner in the Newark Evening News. Barbara Jo Rubin "'sits' a horse like Don Meade and that's saying a lot. Her back is absolutely horizontal. Straight as a ruler and she holds her head high…. She also has a pair of shoe strings for reins." Rubin's love of horses began with the movie National Velvet, starring Elizabeth Taylor . In addition to riding and collecting show ribbons as a child, she enjoyed playing baseball and football, was a good calf roper, and even rode bulls until her mother threatened to take away her horse unless she stopped. Despite a six-month bout in the hospital with polio when she was six, Rubin was a natural athlete.

While growing up in Miami, Rubin found her way to the Tropical Park racetrack, where she became an exercise girl at three dollars per horse. "She was an exceptional rider," said one owner. "The tough horses would run away from the boys in the morning workouts. After Barbara Jo got on the tough ones, there were no problems. I think she talks to horses."

In the late 1960s, when Kathy Kusner applied to the Maryland Racing Commission to become a jockey and then won a court case allowing her onto the track, many women followed. Rubin was among the first, applying to the senior steward at Tropical Park on January 14, 1969. Not long after, she was granted her license and 11 male jockeys boycotted a race in which she was scheduled to ride. Fined $100, they were threatened with greater fines if they refused to ride with women. Then it got ugly. Someone threw a rock through Rubin's dressing-room window. Rumors were followed by innuendo. Some resorted to slander, maintaining that Rubin had been given her license only because of an affair with an influential track official. The male jockeys took a stand, declaring they would not ride horses for any owner who allowed Rubin to ride. One owner, Brian Webb, called their bluff and ended the open rebellion, though the jockeys' wives remained critical, claiming a woman on the track endangered their husbands' lives.

Rubin proceeded to prove herself. She won a race at Nassau's Hobby Horse Hall track in the Bahamas. On February 22, 1969, while riding Cohesian, she became the first woman jockey to win in the United States, prevailing by a neck at Charles Town, West Virginia. She was also the first woman to win a major race. By March 14, she had won seven races and was ready to ride a bay named Bravy Galaxy at Aqueduct. A two-year-old with no track record and odds at 13 to 1, Bravy Galaxy was a speed-ball with Rubin on his back, and she triumphed before a crowd of over 25,000. After the race, fellow jockeys doused her with a bucket of water, a traditional gesture after an apprentice's first win. By April 4, Rubin had won 11 races.

Women jockeys were media celebrities in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Rubin's visage appeared in countless magazines and newspapers; she appeared on "The Ed Sullivan Show" and "The Today Show." However, she was shy by nature, and her main interest was in racing rather than publicity. She continued to compete, winning 23 out of 98 races in her career. "When I rode," said Rubin, "I was a little crazy. Like, I didn't care about going down or anything. And when we went into the turn, they were all looking up at me wondering, 'When is she going to drop out?' … I'd just smile at them. And all of a sudden I looked and they'd all dropped back." But injury is a jockey's greatest threat, and in four years Rubin suffered through three major incidents. In October 1969, a horse flipped over the starting gate at Assinaboa Downs in Canada, crushing both her knees. She recovered and got back in the saddle. In March 1970, her horse went through a fence which resulted in blood clots in her legs and five months on the sidelines. In the summer of 1971, her quarter horse, Junior, reared up and came down backward on top of Rubin, crushing her pelvis. When this last injury resulted in permanent pain, she hung up her racing colors.