Patty Barton

rode everything she could, even the cheapest of horses at bush tracks far from racing’s biggest names and brightest lights. She was stubborn and tough, and somehow managed to rear three kids from different marriages and still get a college degree while following the horses and her dreams. “I was also a mother. I had three kids to support, so I couldn't travel like the others.  I had to maintain a home at one place for the kids.”  Not surprisingly, all three of her children have ridden professionally, and she is the only mother to have raced

against two of them. "My mom's a great lady," Donna Barton said, remembering that, no matter how tired, “mom always had time to bake us kids a rhubarb pie.” In 1984, after 15 years of riding, she was in a severe spill. Her right arm was broken in half, her collarbone crushed, her left jaw shattered and she had broken her ribs and vertebrae. Her helmet was split in half and there was a hole in her head. Patty suffered a blood clot on the brain that left her with some damage in the area that controls memory. She spent 68 days in the hospital and had to relearn the basic skills: sitting, eating, handwriting, and the works.  “I feel everything happens for a reason,”

she said during a recent interview. “The good Lord has a plan for me. Some day I'll find out what it is.”  Patty amassed 1,202 winners, making her the first female jockey to win over 1,000 races, a record that stood until 1988.  She once appeared on “The Johnny Carson Show,” where her challenge to Carson to arm wrestle went unanswered.