The last Black jockey to win the Kentucky Derby.
Jimmy Winkfield won the Kentucky Derby in 1901 and again in 1902. More than a century later, nobody has matched either record. Within two years American racing had closed its saddles to him, and he left the country for good at twenty-three.
What happened next does not sound real. Champion of Russia. The Black Maestro of Moscow and Warsaw. An eleven-hundred-mile drive of two hundred thoroughbreds across the steppe with a revolution behind him. A training yard outside Paris, occupied by the Germans in 1940. And a banquet in Louisville in 1961, sixty years after the first win.
Ninety chapters across three novels, each in three movements, anchored to the documented record.
The three novels
The Last Derby. Chilesburg to Churchill Downs. A farm boy, a four-horse pile-up at Latonia, two Derby wins, and a sport that closes around him without ever writing the rule down.
The Tsar's Jockey. Warsaw, Moscow, St. Petersburg, Baden-Baden. Champion of Russia by December 1905, and a life in the empire that would have been unimaginable at home. It ends in July 1914.
The Long Way Home. War, revolution, the drive across the steppe, typhus, Warsaw again with nothing. Then Maisons-Laffitte, the occupation, and a banquet in Louisville in 1961 that does not go the way the invitation promised.
Bought separately that is $23.97. The trilogy is $19.
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