Pound for pound, jockeys are among the world’s great athletes, packing the power to control a thousand-pound animal into a light frame that balances on a saddle that weighs less than a bag of sugar. Day in and day out, they battle their bodies, the weather, and the inherent risks of riding a horse going 35 to 40 miles per hour to do what they love.

Some stay in the saddle for only a few years, injury or weight sending them to the sidelines, and others, like Perry Ouzts and Mike Smith, spend decades on the back of racehorses, flying down the stretch with the same energy no matter their age. One day, though, time will tell us all that the final ride is nigh.

For Cindy Murphy, 36 years in the saddle have taken her from small town Iowa to racetracks in both North and South America, a career that has seen her balance pursuing her dreams while also relishing her roles as mother and grandmother. As she prepares for her final ride, Murphy’s story is an example of perseverance and grit in the face of the highs and lows of life in the saddle.

Humble Beginnings

Cindy Murphy grew up as one of five children raised by her mother, a teacher, near Muscatine, Iowa. Her love for horses started early, her mother using her limited funds to buy “an unbroke Shetland pony, which I attempted to ride many times and always got dumped,” Murphy recalled. Later, the family moved to an area where they had more acreage and had a few backyard horses which Cindy and her siblings were able to care for and ride down nearby gravel roads. Eventually, this aspiring horsewoman saved her babysitting money to buy a bigger horse, but the idea of becoming a jockey came during her college years.

Murphy winning Iowa Oaks on Crypto Mo (Coady Photography)

After graduating from Muscatine High School in 1980, Murphy attended Northeast Missouri State University (now Truman State University), where she pursued a Bachelor of Science degree in Agriculture with a focus in equine studies, her eye on attending veterinary school after graduating. There, she excelled as a track and cross-country runner, her four years as a letter winner earning her a spot in the university’s Athletic Hall of Fame. As a natural lightweight, her lithe frame was perfect for those long-distance track events and another sort of athletic pursuit, this one in a saddle.

“I was reading an article one time about this jockey school called Hawkeye Hill in Indiana,” Murphy recalled. “I thought ‘that’d be fun to go.’ [The course] was only a couple of months so I saved up my money and went to it.”

Located in Commiskey, Ind., about 50 miles from Louisville, Ky., Hawkeye Hill Racing School was a state-accredited school that taught everything from grooming to exercise riding. Lisa and Mitch Thompson started the school in 1979 after learning about the need for qualified help around the racetrack. Murphy attended the program between her junior and senior years, learning how to gallop racehorses while still intending to move on to veterinary school once she graduated. Instead, opportunity intervened.

Hawkeye Hill maintained a list of people looking for grooms, exercise riders, and more. During her time there, Murphy had been encouraged to pursue becoming a jockey, her naturally light and strong body making her an ideal fit for the saddle. On the list “were some people in Florida that were looking for an exercise rider, so I called them up and got a job with this Argentinian family,” Murphy said. She galloped horses for them at Hialeah Park before following the family back to Argentina, where she stayed for two years. “I was young and adventurous and wasn’t tied down with a husband or children yet,” she recalled of her time in South America. “I didn’t plan to stay that long, but it just ended up that way.”

She started riding there in 1986, getting experience at tracks like Hipodromo Argentino de Palermo, San Isidro, and La Plata, before returning to the United States in 1ate 1987.

“I got like, man, I need to come back home,” Murphy shared. “I’m homesick.”

She was still an apprentice when she logged her first American mount in October 1987 at Calder Race Course in Florida and then recorded her first win on Dec. 8, 1987, aboard Ocala Spender at Tampa Bay Downs. From there, she rode up and down the East Coast, from Florida to Pennsylvania, before shifting her tack back to the Midwest and home.

A Milestone Win

When Prairie Meadows Racetrack opened on March 1, 1989, Cindy Springman, later known as Cindy Noll, was aboard the winner of the first race at the Altoona, Iowa, track, guiding Holmish to a three-length win for owner Joe Fett, and she has since made the racetrack her home. She and husband Travis Murphy, a trainer she met through his mother (also a fellow rider) in 2001 and married in 2005, have a farm near Remington Park in Oklahoma, where they are expecting the first crop of foals in 2024. Together with her three grown children and five grandchildren, Murphy has quite a bit to look forward to as she prepares to say goodbye to her life as a jockey, though the final ride is still somewhat up in the air.

Murphy winning Iowa Oaks on Crypto Mo (Coady Photography)

“I kind of lied a little bit because I’m going to finish out the year, actually,” she laughed. “Now we have a few horses at Remington Park, and if I decide to ride some at Remington, I will. And if any of them turn out good enough to go to the Keeneland meet in October, I might ride a couple there.”

For sure, though, the end of 2023 will spell the end of Cindy Murphy’s time riding in the afternoons, though she will continue to ride in the mornings for her husband. The transition is bittersweet, especially coming after the 2023 season she has had thanks to a filly named Crypto Mo.

A chestnut filly by Mohaymen out of the Forty Tales mare Forty Winds, she was purchased by Travis Murphy for $20,000 at the 2021 Keeneland September yearling sale. Owned by a partnership that included Murphy, Matt Trent, and Triple V Racing, the filly was making her first start in June 2022 with Cindy Murphy aboard. They were preparing to load into the starting gate when the filly spooked and reared straight into the air. “She reared up and she just kind of lost her balance more than flipped,” the 61-year-old jockey recalled. “I jumped off to the side and that is exactly where she fell on top of me.”

That accident fractured her pelvis in four places and left her with cracked ribs and a tear in an abdominal muscle. Her recovery took nearly 10 months, but she was back in the saddle this past April, her heart still set on getting her 2,000^th career win. Her family, however, was ready for their mother and grandmother to call it a day after this most recent on-track accident. Over her three decades in the saddle, she has fractured six bones, including her pelvis and ribs in a 2001 Oaklawn Park accident; was sidelined by a broken wrist in 2004; and then battled back from a bruised spinal cord and fused vertebrae after a 2006 spill at Prairie Meadows. Each time, Murphy persevered through the physical challenges to slip her feet into the irons one more time, admittedly addicted to “the thrill of competition.”

“The thrill of victory, I guess, is more accurate because it’s not just the competition, but when you win, there’s nothing like it. It’s a lot of fun,” Murphy said.

Crypto Mo brought Murphy another thrill in July 2023, a year after that harrowing moment behind the starting gate. In her latest three starts, where she switched from sprints to two-turn races, the filly has notched three consecutive victories, including an allowance win by 17¾ lengths, her first black-type victory in the Panthers Stakes, and then her first graded stakes win in the Grade 3 Iowa Oaks. With Murphy aboard, Crypto Mo led from start to finish, holding off favorite Imonra to win by two lengths. Not only did the filly give Travis Murphy his first graded stakes win, but it gave Cindy her first as well. Crypto Mo’s Iowa Oaks victory also gave the veteran jockey her 2,000^th win, finally hitting that milestone that had kept her in the saddle longer than her family might have wanted.

She had several chances to hit that mark before the Iowa Oaks, but the mounts ran second or third or finished out of the money altogether. She sat at 1,999 for six days before that ride on Crypto Mo. “The week before, after we entered her and I still hadn’t won that 2000^th, I’m like, ‘wouldn’t that be cool?’ ” Murphy laughed. “But it’s a tough race, a big race. What are the chances of that?”

Yet, in a story that is almost too good to be true, one made for the big screen, the horse that had put her on the sidelines for nearly a year became the horse to bring her that monumental win. “I was floating on air. During the gallop-out, I’m like, wow, did this really happen?” she said of the Iowa Oaks win. “It was just the best feeling in the world.”

The Next Phase

After the Grade 3 victory, the filly’s ownership group capitalized on the opportunity and supplemented Crypto Mo to the Fasig-Tipton July sale, where she sold for $500,000 to Hunter Valley Farm. Murphy’s milestone horse is now part of the Brad Cox barn, but she remains close to the veteran jockey’s heart. In her top 10 list of horses she has ridden, Crypto Mo “is right up there at the top. She’s probably the very top one for me now because I won three in a row on her and the biggest race, moneywise, of my life.”

She has other favorites too, like Sumthintotalkabout, with whom she won multiple stakes races, and game geldings like Moto Moto and Knocker Down. Though she might be stepping away from riding in the afternoons, Murphy will not be too far away from the animals she loves as she works with husband, Travis, and their stable. The couple is focused on breeding and buying horses for racing at Remington Park, Prairie Meadows, and beyond.

“I’m getting older, and arthritis is settling in. And your reaction time, even though you don’t want to admit it, is probably a little bit slower than it used to be,” Murphy said of her upcoming retirement. “Even though I don’t want to acknowledge that I’m getting older and not as sharp as I used to be, I’m going to have to.”

A determined, tough as hell, rider. (Courtesy of Cindy Murphy)

Fittingly, just as Murphy won the first-ever race at Prairie Meadows, she guided Gold Tapper to a head victory in the 14th and final race on the closing card of the 2023 season at the Iowa track. The winning trainer was Brandi Fett, a co-owner of Gold Tapper along with her father, Joe Fett, the same Joe Fett whose Holmish won the first race at Prairie Meadows more than 34 years ago.

In a career that has seen her ride at more than 30 racetracks from Argentina to Iowa, Cindy Murphy plans to trade in her afternoons in the jockey’s room for afternoons cheering on her children and grandchildren as they pursue their own sporting ambitions. She looks forward to watching more of her youngest son Emmett’s competitions for Oklahoma Baptist University’s track team and being on hand for her grandchildren’s turns around a soccer field and the gymnastics mat. The Murphys have always been focused on their family, Cindy giving up mounts to be there for birthdays and holidays, but stepping away means stepping into a new life with more time for the loved ones ready for her to call it quits.

“They’ve been ready for the last 10 years,” she shared. “Obviously, they want me to spend more time with them, but they’re also worried about the injury factor.”

As she plans those last mounts through these waning days of 2023, Cindy Murphy knows how she wants to be remembered: “I want people to remember me as being hard-working and honest and tough. I have always been a hard worker, always out there trying as hard as I could, and everybody knew I was going to give 110%. So, I guess for them to remember me that way would be a blessing.”

“One of the agents that’s a friend of mine [Becky Esch] … got me this Under Armour shirt that says, ‘Tough as hell.’ She said, ‘I saw this shirt and I had to get it for you.’ ” Murphy laughed. “I kind of have that reputation: tough as hell and always giving 110%.”