Diane Crump passes at age 77 . .
OLDSMAR - Sunday racing is set for its 2025-26 season debut today with a nine-race card beginning at 12:32 p.m. Course conditions permitting, there are three turf races on tap – the fifth, seventh and ninth – all at a distance of 1 mile.
Sunday racing was first conducted at Tampa Bay Downs on Dec. 7, 1986. It arrived a little more than a year after the Florida State Supreme Court had overturned a lower court ruling that would have allowed Sunday racing, upsetting fans eager for more entertainment options on the weekend.
The Supreme Court justices had ruled that a Sunday ban on gambling on horse racing was constitutional because it limited the opportunity for “mischief” and encouraged people to spend their leisure time in “more healthy recreational pursuits” and had a legitimate purpose: protecting the public “health, safety, morals or general welfare.”
Many in the crowd of 5,893 those 39 seasons ago viewed things differently, and Sunday racing has remained an Oldsmar oval staple, introducing a new fan demographic appreciative of the grandeur and thrills of Thoroughbred racing.
Tampa Bay Downs will race each Wednesday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday through the duration of the meet except for Easter Sunday, April 5, when the track will be closed. Beginning Sunday, Jan. 25, the track will hold a series of “Mouse’s Kids & Family Days” on various Sundays in the Backyard Picnic Area, with pony rides, bounce houses, games and special activities, a food truck and visits from the track mascot, Mouse the Miniature Horse.
Sounds like a lot of fun – the good, old-fashioned family kind that draws entertainment lovers from all walks of life.
Juan Carlos Avila saddled three winners Saturday, extending his lead in the trainer race to 16-11 from Juan Arriagada. Avila won the third race with Midnight Onyx, a 6-year-old Florida-bred gelding owned by Establo Heluce and ridden by Samy Camacho. Avila added the fourth race with Homer Jones, a 5-year-old Florida-bred gelding owned by Nigale Racing Group and ridden by Cipriano Gil.
With rain falling, Avila’s 4-year-old Florida-bred colt Gianluca Be Lucky played “catch-me-if-you-can,” going gate-to-wire in the ninth race under jockey Daniel Centeno. The speedster is owned by Julian De Mora, Jr.
Camacho scored again in the fifth race on the turf aboard heavy favorite French Mistress, a 4-year-old filly owned by Martine Head and trained by Miguel Clement. That conditioner has been red-hot at the Oldsmar oval, with five victories and a second from his last seven Tampa Bay Downs starters – closer to perfect than it might appear, considering his entrants Willpowered and Duty finished 1-2 in Friday’s seventh race.
Crump remembered for chasing her dream.
The Tampa Bay Downs community and racing fans across the country were saddened to learn of the passing Thursday of jockey Diane Crump, who made history in 1969 at Hialeah Park by becoming the first woman to ride in a parimutuel race and again the following year as the first woman to ride in the Kentucky Derby. She was 77.
While most of the reports of her career focused on those two groundbreaking feats, Crump was a highly visible presence at the outset of her career at the track then known as Florida Downs. Her father, Walter Crump, owned a marina in Oldsmar, and horse-crazy Diane got a job at Lake Magdalene Farm in Tampa while attending Chamberlain High School.
Crump set her sights on a career as a jockey despite facing widespread resistance in an era when many male jockeys believed women had no place on the racetrack, an opinion shared by a large segment of the betting population. Among a group that included fellow pioneers such as Kathy Kusner, Penny Ann Early, Barbara Jo Rubin, Patti Barton, Mary Bacon and Robyn Smith, Crump became the first to compete in a race, finishing 10th on Bridle ’n Bit at Hialeah Park on Feb. 7, 1969.
On March 1, 1969 at Florida Downs, Crump was first across the finish line on Bridle ’n Bit, entering the winner’s circle for what appeared to be her first career triumph (Barbara Jo Rubin had won a race at Charles Town the previous week to become the first female jockey to score a victory). But Crump’s win was reversed by the Florida State Racing Commission because of a rule that prohibited a horse claimed at Hialeah from running elsewhere before the conclusion of the south Florida track’s meeting.
The 20-year-old Crump would have to wait almost three more weeks before earning her first official victory on Tou Ritzi – but at Gulfstream Park, not Florida Downs. A year later, Crump rode a horse named Fathom in the Kentucky Derby, finishing 15th in the race won by Tampa Bay Downs jockey Mike Manganello on Dust Commander.
Crump rode 228 winners from 1976 onward, according to Equibase statistics, and also saddled 14 winners as a trainer. She rode her final race at Tampa Bay Downs in 1998, a few weeks before turning 50, finishing second on the aptly-named Glory Days, a 3-year-old filly she also trained.
Crump – who attended the inaugural “Jockeys and Jeans” fundraiser on March 29, 2014 at Tampa Bay Downs to raise money for the Permanently Disabled Jockeys Fund – always handled the intense glare from the media and public with grace and composure.
“I never felt like a pioneer or trailblazer,” she told writer Liane Crossley in 2019. “I just wanted to live my dream and I most certainly did.”And, in the process, helped make it possible for countless other young women athletes to pursue theirs.