Jumping Judy

In England women have for some years been allowed to ride in the United Kingdom's oldest horse race, the Town Plate. run at Newmarket since the days of Charles II. This week, at Maryland's Pimlico race track, U.S. fans for the first time will see a woman riding in a professional race. She is apple-cheeked, 29-year-old Judy Johnson, of Bethesda, Md., who has convinced the Maryland Racing Commission that she is as good a steeplechase rider as any jockey in the business.

Judy Johnson inherited her horsiness from her father, Trainer Ed Johnson, who saddled many a stake winner, both here and abroad, for such eminent turfmen as the late William C. Whitney, Foxhall Keene and John McEntee Bowman. Little Judy was a capable rider at the age of eight, helped her father break in yearlings by the time she was 14.

For the past ten years she has been training horses on her own. Washingtonian T. T. Mott, whose string she now handles, refuses to buy a racer without her O.K. Last summer Horse Owner James V. Stewart urged Mr. Mott to buy a hand some young jumper. Judy demanded a trial run around the local Laurel course. She mounted, skimmed around the course until the last fence, where the horse crashed to the turf, head first. When an ambulance reached her, Judy was uncon scious. Coming to, she muttered: "Mr. Stewart, we don't want to buy your horse."

Judy Johnson can't remember the number of times she has been thrown--on polofields, in point-to-points and just schooling jumpers. Once a broken pelvis kept her in a hospital for ten weeks. Once she was unconscious for two and a half hours after a tumble.

Because she considers nearing a jump the greatest thrill she knows, Judy John son has no aspirations to become a flatrace jockey. Last week, before the Mary land Racing Commission granted her a license, they demanded that the operators of Pimlico provide a separate jockey room for Judy.

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