Mary Bacon

was probably the most controversial of all the female jockeys. This fiery, attractive, petite blond had been kidnapped, shot at, rode pregnant, posed nude in Playboy and Genesis, was on the cover of Newsweek, and appeared on several television shows. A great quote, writers could not get to their typewriters fast enough when she spoke. She was a great quote. About her trademark flowered panties, which always showed through her white jockey pants, she said, "When I'm on the lead, it gives the boys back there something to look at.” But it was her mouth that

would begin to send her career into decline. In April 1975, while riding at the Fairgrounds in New Orleans, she spoke at a Ku Klux Klan rally in Walker, La. "We are not just a bunch of illiterate Southern nigger-killers…when one of your wives or one of your sisters gets raped by a nigger, maybe you'll get smart and join the Klan.” For the first time in her life, a camera would be her undoing. Almost immediately, her endorsement contract with Revlon as the first “Charlie” girl was cancelled and her mounts dwindled from 323 in 1974 to 38 in 1976. However, quitting was not in Mary’s vocabulary. Over the years, she suffered 51 broken bones, crushed her pelvis, and ruptured her spleen.

But she always managed to come back. In 1982, Mary went down in yet another spill but this time remained in a coma for eight days. The doctors said she was permanently brain-damaged, yet she quipped, “I don’t have brain-damage, it's just my personality.” Mary and her husband traveled from track to track looking for mounts, but no one would give her a leg up except at the smaller tracks in Texas. By 1991, Mary learned she had cervical cancer and that it was terminal. Shortly thereafter, she drove to a motel outside of Ft. Worth and shot herself. In 1970, during her first year of riding, a Winnipeg reporter asked her how long she thought she would ride and she replied, “Until the day I die.”