Canadian racing trailblazer Francine Villeneuve dies at 61

Francine Villeneuve was more than a familiar name on Canadian racing cards. She was the standard-bearer in Fort Erie, a trailblazer at Woodbine, and the first female jockey in Canadian history to reach 1,000 career wins, a milestone that made her death at 61 resonate far beyond a single backstretch.

Villeneuve died June 5 after a long battle with cancer. Her record tells the scale of what Canadian racing lost: 8,130 starts, 1,000 wins, 1,019 seconds, 1,065 thirds and $15,466,622 in earnings, with her mounts earning nearly $15.5 million. She was born in Ottawa, grew up in Winchester Springs, attended North Dundas District High School in Chesterville and got her start in 1984 as a hot walker at Woodbine while studying equine studies at Humber College. By 1987, she had her jockey license.

Her biggest number came on Oct. 31, 2011, when she rode Red Hot Doll to victory in the $30,000 Fan’s Cup at Fort Erie and became the first female Canadian jockey to reach 1,000 wins. That was not a ceremonial finish line. It was the kind of hard-earned benchmark that only lands if it is backed by years of daily consistency, and Villeneuve kept pushing long enough to retire in April 2012 as the winningest female Canadian jockey of all time.

The races that built her reputation were not limited to one track. Villeneuve rode Wilderness Song to a second-place finish behind Dance Smartly in the 1991 Queen’s Plate, then won the Bison City Stakes with the filly. She also had notable mounts in the Breeders’ Cup Distaff and aboard Autumn Snow in the 2005 Prince of Wales Stakes, where she was second. Those rides put her in the center of the biggest Canadian and North American stages, and she held her own there.

What made Villeneuve matter in Fort Erie and across Canadian racing was the breadth of the career that followed the saddle. She launched a trainer career in 2013, won 49 races and two stakes, including the 2019 Flaming Page Stakes with Giovanna Blues and the 2019 Puss N Boots Cup with Reallylikethisone. She later worked as a jockey agent for riders including Justin Stein and Skye Chernetz, and she co-founded Sport of Queens with Amanda Roxborough to bring new fans into the sport. Fort Erie Race Track called her its beloved Queen of Fort Erie and a trailblazing pioneer, and that nickname fit because she was never just a winner. She was a fixture, a mentor and one of the most recognizable faces Canadian racing ever produced.