Eddie Maple
Edward Retz "Eddie" Maple is a retired American thoroughbred horse racing jockey. One of eight brothers and sisters, he was an older brother to jockey Sam Maple who won more than 2,500 races. He began riding horses at age 12 and won his first race as a professional at 17. He went on to be one of the top jockeys in the United States and a National Hall of Fame inductee.
He won his first race at Ascot Park in Akron. He spent his early career in Ohio and West Virginia, and moved to tracks in New Jersey in 1970, but then later relocated to New York in 1971.
Maple was the jockey for Hall of Famer Riva Ridge in the 1973 Marlboro Cup, getting the ride when regular jockey Ron Turcotte rode Secretariat to victory in the same race. His strong 2nd-place performance earned him the opportunity of a lifetime later that year when Turcotte was suspended from riding for five days, and Eddie Maple rode Secretariat to victory in his last race, the Canadian International Stakes at Woodbine Racetrack. In 1982 he scored his second win in the Canadian International with Majesty's Prince.
In 1980, Eddie Maple won the Belmont Stakes aboard Temperence Hill and again in 1985 on Creme Fraiche. He competed in nine Kentucky Derbys, his best finish a second in 1982 behind winner Gato Del Sol. Among his other major victories, Eddie Maple won the Travers Stakes three times, the Kentucky Oaks, the Arlington Million, and the 1991 Italian 1,000 Guineas in Rome, Italy.
In 1995, Eddie Maple was voted the George Woolf Memorial Jockey Award, and in 1998, the Mike Venezia Memorial Award. He retired in 1998 with 4,398 wins. He and his wife ran a retail home and garden store on Long Island, New York until 2005 when they sold the business and took on the position of General Manager at the Rose Hill Plantation Equestrian Boarding And Teaching Center in Bluffton, South Carolina.
Eddie was inducted into the National Racing Hall of Fame in 2009.
