A Mouthpiece Sports video tour of the jockey’s room at Hawthorne Park with Inez Karlsson.
Although his fellow jocks, trainers and neighbors had their suspicions, Australian horseman Bill Smith turned out to be, as was revealed at the time of his death at age 88 in 1975, Wilhemena Smith.
That’s right. Wilhemena Smith was the first Australian woman licensed as a jockey who competed with the men.
Think about it. Bill Smith had held both an Australian jockey’s and a trainer’s license in the 1940s and 1950s, according to this Australian racing website.
We first heard in the US about female jockeys in the late 1960s when Diane Crump became the first licensed jockey here.
But I can’t help but wonder if there had been any American versions of Australia’s Wilhemena Smith?
Current interest in female jockeys
We’re at a time when jockeys’ lives have become part of the public fascination, partly thanks to Animal Planet’s series “Jockeys,” which returns to TV on Friday at 9 pm EDT.
Two of the jockeys on the show are women. Kayla Stra and Chantal Sutherland were on the show last year and will return for this second season.
But that’s not all. A documentary about the early American female jockeys (circa mid-20th century) called Jocks is in production.
So is another movie titled The Boys Club, about Hall of Fame retired jockey Julie Krone. (Check out this article from 2000 about Krone on Salon.com.)
About Wilhemena Smith
Jockey Bill Smith was also known as “Girlie” for “his” soft voice and shy demeanor that kept him out of the showers and avoiding changing into silks in front of the other guys. When injured, Smith reportedly refused medical attention to avoid any undressing related to the job.
Speculation about Bill Smith’s true gender ran so wild that some of Smith’s colleagues had planned to ambush and strip Girlie to see just what was underneath the clothes, until a racing steward stopped them.
Otherwise, Smith wouldn’t have been able to carry her secret all the way to her deathbed.
Can you imagine how awful that attack could have been, especially in the early part of the mid-20th century? Let alone at a small track in rugged North Queensland?
At the very least, she would have been exposed as a fraud.
But all I could think of, when I read her story, was about the 1999 movie that won Hilary Swank an Oscar, Boys Don’t Cry.
If you read this Salon article about Julie Krone and the trials experienced by her and other leading pioneer female jockeys, then you can imagine a bit of what Bill “Girlie” Smith might have escaped, thanks to the steward’s intervention.
No hiding today
Now, female jockeys are a bit ambivalent about being singled out as women. They consider themselves fellow riders. They are competitive – and they win.
Some have added glamor to their images – a situation unimaginable in Bill “Girlie” Smith’s day.
Chantal Sutherland’s website features a nude photographic portrait taken by famed portrait photographer Annie Leibovitz. Sutherland has also modeled in Vogue magazine.
Here’s a video by HRTV from Handride’s blog about Sutherland and her career.
Did you notice in that ESPN link earlier in the story? The one with the photo of Inez Karlsson dressed up for the Eclipse Awards? If not, take a look again.
Karlsson’s gown is decorated with a floral ornament in the back. That the flower is on her back doesn’t seem like a coincidence. After all, that’s how jockeys want to be viewed, especially by their competition – from the rear by everyone else scrambling up from behind.
Tags: Animal Planet's "Jockeys, Australian horse racing history, Bill Smith, Inez Karlsson, Jocks, Julie Krone, The Boys Club, Wilhemena Smith
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