Montana Woman Covers Kentucky Derby From Outside the Saddle

By Tad Sooter, 5-05-07

On Saturday, 28-year-old Montana native Kris Prather will be at Churchill Downs for the 133rd Running of the Kentucky Derby. It was at Churchill Downs in 2000 that Prather rode her first race as a jockey, igniting a sensational career that would take her to the top of the thoroughbred-racing world. But on Saturday Prather will be watching the race as a reporter for the Louisville Courier-Journal, part of a writing career that has brought new purpose to her life since a string of injuries cut short the career of her dreams.

Growing up on a farm near Stevensville, just south of Missoula, Prather said she devoured the Black Stallion series and was excited by the harrowing tales of the mythical racehorse. In a state of quarter horses and rodeos she dreamed of riding sleek thoroughbreds on America’s oval tracks, an ambition she pursued with a tenacity that would become her trademark.

At age ten, she got her first horse, an Arabian just like the stallion. Her first riding competition hardly foreshadowed her future success.

“I entered my horse one year in 4-H,” Prather said in an interview. “In the show competition she kicked the judge. In the next event I got thrown before I even got in the arena and my horse ended up in a mule race that was going at the same time.”

In high school she excelled at soccer and enjoyed rock climbing but by graduation her aspirations to be a jockey hadn’t faded. After graduating from Stevensville High School in 1997, she decided the only way to follow her dream was to go to Kentucky. She emailed every racing stable she could find on the internet and asked for any job they would give her.

“I said I had no experience with racing but I could ride a horse,” she said.

A stable emailed back offering a job “breaking babies” (exercising young horses) and she flew to Kentucky. She worked with a few trainers before settling with Frank Brothers whose wife Donna was a famous jockey and now covers races for NBC from horseback.
Exercising horses was grueling. Prather was up before dawn and in the saddle most of the day, but she had grown up helping her grandfather on his Bitterroot farm and was used to hard work.

“You have to work very hard and it helped to come from that mentality where you work hard to make a living,” she said. “You definitely can’t be born with a silver spoon in your mouth.”

Donna Brothers became Prather’s close friend and mentor. They shared the same body type and Brothers could give her tips on conditioning and riding better than the male riders. Prather said it is harder for women to build the muscle mass needed to ride but by mimicking Brothers and packing in protein, she worked herself into race-ready condition.

“I had played soccer and ran long distance, but I was never as fit as when I rode,” Prather said. “You could see every muscle on my back.”

Prather never let the Brothers forget her goal of being a jockey and after riding in “schooling” races in Louisiana to prepare two-year-olds for the real track, the Brothers finally decided she was ready for a race. On the 4th of July, 2000, at Churchill Downs, she rode a horse named Courageous to a fifth-place finish, a good showing for the old horse. Her first race seemed natural.

“It felt like I had been doing it forever,” she said.

For the rest of the year she rode mostly long shots. Her first win came in August at Ellis Park on a little grey horse named Resignation.

“It was amazing,” Prather said. “I was always expecting someone to pass me but at the wire I looked both ways and they were clear.”

That winter she moved to Turfway Park in northern Kentucky to begin her first full year of racing and the wins started to pile up. In February of 2001 she set a Turfway record with six first-place finishes in one day.  She said the main reason she excelled as a jockey was that horses fed off of her energy.

“With me I was truly excited every time I was on a horse,” she said. “I was always ruffling their manes, telling them they were going to win. I know the horses responded to that.”

By the middle of March she was leading all North American jockeys in wins for the year with more than 100. 

“I wanted to be number one in the nation, to see my name on the top of the list, and I did,” Prather said. “Of course everyone wants to win a Kentucky Derby, but my career was a little bit short.”

After a spring hampered by knee injuries, Prather arrived for the opening day of Churchill Downs still high in the standings. In the morning she was galloping a mare before the day’s racing began when the horse suddenly shied and spun around, throwing her out of the saddle. Her foot caught in the stirrup and she grabbed a rein with her left hand to keep from being drug.  She felt the jerking of the mare’s neck pull her left shoulder out of its socket but she held on until the horse was calm.

Prather had her shoulder popped back in place and refused the waiting ambulance. She had a day of racing to finish. She rode for another two weeks, winning four races at Churchill Downs before the pain became unbearable. The doctors told her she had been racing with a broken shoulder blade, bruised bones and a shredded rotator cuff.

Over the next two years Prather went through a series of surgeries, physical therapy sessions, comeback attempts and re-injuries.  She raced in West Virginia for a while, and then tried Emerald Downs in Seattle before coming back to Kentucky. By 2004 it was clear that her shoulder could not hold up to the rigors of racing.

“When the doctors told me I couldn’t race any more, I was like ‘no that’s the wrong answer,’” Prather said. “It was devastating to put it mildly. It was my dream to be a great jockey. It was the only thing I had ever wanted and I had no backup plan.”

According to a Courier-Journal story, Prather had ridden 1,356 races with 252 wins in just three years of racing and despite months lost to injury. But her success was little consolation for the loss of her passion. For a time she lived withdrawn “in a little cave”--in constant pain from her shoulder and depressed at the collapse of her career. Prather’s mother Joan said her family in Montana supported her in every way they could, but there wasn’t much they could say.

“I just hoped and prayed that something would turn around for her and that something would come along to fill that empty spot,” Joan said.

Prather had enjoyed writing stories and poetry since childhood and it was Donna Brothers who encouraged her to pursue her creative skills. Prather attacked writing with the same dedication she had shown as a jockey, beginning her first novel in 2005. She has now written two novels along with the first two books in a fiction series for young adults. Her “A Racing Chance” series follows the struggles of a young female jockey and Prather tried to make the story as accurate as possible, even adding a glossary of racing terms in the back of the books. She is grateful to the Brothers for supporting her in her writing and the fresh start it has given her.

“Donna and Franckie honestly may have saved my life,” she said.

Prather recently signed with an agent from the Sanford J. Greenburger firm and just last week was told that a Time Warner publishing company was reviewing A Racing Chance. While the writing flowed easily for her, she has found the publishing business ponderously slow.

“I’m used to racing, where two minutes is a long time,” she said.

In the November of last year Prather had a fifth shoulder surgery to replace the bones in her left arm with titanium from above the elbow through her shoulder. She said the operation reduced the pain but she is still regaining strength in her arm.

During her racing career Prather said she would come home to her parents’ house in Stevensville to rest each time she was injured, which was often.  She was in Montana last August for the wedding of her sister, Kim, who is a beautician in Missoula. Her parents, Mike and Joan, raise Maine-Anjou cattle on their 40-acre farm near Stevensville and they still take care of Prather’s Arabian.

Someday Prather would like to return to Montana and continue her writing career from a log cabin in the Bitterroot. For now she is sticking by the track and close to the action.

On Saturday, Prather will be a rookie again, chasing down the trainers of losing Derby horses to interview for the Louisville Courier-Journal. Though adjusting to a new career hasn’t easy, she is beginning to see how a life off the track can be good.

“Racing was very draining,” she said. “I think I will enjoy writing more in the long term.”

Kris Prather’s Courier-Journal Blog is found here.