A few years before she launched her riding career in 2022 Madison Olver remembers taking a trip to the Racing Museum and Hall of Fame in Saratoga Springs, N.Y., where she was captivated seeing the saddle used by Julie Krone from the 1993 Belmont Stakes, when Krone became the first female jockey to win a Triple Crown race.

Little did Olver know that several years later she would be accomplishing something at Monmouth Park that only Krone, a Hall of Famer, has managed to achieve.

Heading into the two-day racing weekend, Olver is tied for fifth in the jockey standings with 18 wins. With just four racing days left in the meet, that means she will finish in the top 10 for the third straight year.

That has only been done once by a female jockey at Monmouth Park, when Krone won riding titles at the Jersey Shore from 1987-89.

“Just to have my name mentioned in the same sentence as hers is pretty cool,” said Olver, who is listed to ride seven races on both Saturday and Sunday. “I have never met her but I know she was a beast of a rider.”

The 26-year-old Olver is starting to make her own mark at Monmouth Park, needing one more win to top her personal best since she started riding summers there in 2023. That one more win would also give her the second-most victories by a female jockey at Monmouth Park since 2001. Ferrin Peterson won 42 races in 2020.

“I would like to blow last year’s total out of the water,” she said. “But just one more win would be a great achievement, because I wasn’t expecting this.

“The summer has been awesome for me. I’m grateful for the support from both older people and new people. The meet has been a pleasant surprise for me. You don’t know what will happen when you come into a meet like this because there are so many talented riders here.”

For Olver, one of the highlights of the meet was her 100^th career victory, achieved aboard My Pal Max on June 29.

“It meant a lot,” she said. “I know it’s not a big number like 1,000, like a lot of riders celebrate, but for someone like me it is a big deal.”

But one of the more forgettable days of the meet for Olver would follow on Aug. 24, when even-money favorite Kate’s Love stumbled at the start, pitching Olver forward to the ground. She escaped injury but panicked many in her family who had come from Colorado that weekend to see her ride.

“I felt so bad. They show up and that happens,” said Olver, a Fort Collins, Colorado, native and graduate of Colorado State University. “The race before that I fell off in the post parade.

“I was sad for the connections (owner-trainer Joann Bertone) of Kate’s Love because they are such nice people and they deserved that win. It’s not like they have a lot of horses that they run so it bummed me out.”

Olver said her mom didn’t lecture her about the dangers of her profession afterward, though she has dropped subtle hints in the past about a different career path.

“She will remind me that I don’t need to do this, that I have a college degree and that I can do other things,” said Olver. “My mom has ridden horses her whole life. She has seen me fall off horses since I could walk. She knows the drill.”

Olver’s solid meet is part of a solid presence by female jockeys this summer at Monmouth Park, with Melissa Iorio and Chantal Sutherland tied for ninth in the rider standings. Iorio is looking for a second straight top 10 finish at Monmouth.