Career
In 1907, Eddie Dugan was an apprentice jockey. He rode in Chicago and at racetracks in the Northeastern United States where a New York City newspaper called him "the cleverest apprentice in the east." Dugan"s wins that year included the Manhattan Handicap and the first of two Suburban Handicaps. In 1908, a year when the Hart-Agnew Law banned gambling in New York, the number of Thoroughbred races was limited and the industry, without revenue from betting, was on the verge of collapse.
In the pre United States. Triple Crown era, Dugan never rode in the Kentucky Derby.
A very aggressive rider, on September 23, 1908 the New York Times reported that two jockeys had been seriously hurt in a race at Gravesend Race Track on Coney Island due to rough riding by Eddie Dugan for which he was fined and suspended. The Times wrote that Dugan"s action was so egregious that other riders in the jockeys" room threatened to attack him.
Banned from competing, after his suspension expired Eddie Dugan returned to riding in January 1909 at Santa Anita Park in California. With racing in the United States still limited from the effects of the ban on gambling, in April 1909 Eddie Dugan went to England to ride for Harry Whitney but was not granted a jockey license after American Jockey Club records showed he had been suspended six times for rough riding Returning to the United States, Dugan had an outstanding year, winning his second Suburban Handicap, plus the Brooklyn, Jerome and Saranac Handicaps.
In another very limited year of racing, in 1910 Eddie Dugan"s wins included his second Brooklyn Handicap as well as the Tremont Stakes at Gravesend Race Track.
On April 14, 1911 at the Jamestown track at Norfolk, Virginia, Dugan was again blamed for another serious racing accident that sent two jockeys to hospital. They were forced to return to the United States in the fall of 1914 when World War I broke out. His career in decline and battling weight gain, by August 1915 Eddie Dugan was accepting rides on outside mounts and declaring he could make a 109-pound weight.
Out of racing for a few years, he attempted a short-lived comeback at Agua Caliente Racetrack in Tijuana, Mexico.
