In 1929, America looked quite different to women than the country we see today. Women have only been allowed to vote in recent elections, and they have been given little control over their wealth and income. Margaret Sanger fought for women’s right to learn about birth control, but there was still a limit to when and where women were allowed to work. America is just months away from the Great Recession, an era that saw birth and marriage rates fall, and more and more women entered the workforce to support themselves. . In 1929, Maude Yagle became the first and only person women win the championship Indianapolis 500.
Details of Yagle’s early life are difficult to know, but Kate Bekk of Motorsport Anthology reported that her research showed that Yagle was born Maude Fagley on March 19, 1883. She came from a coal mining family, then made her way to Philadelphia, where she married successful businessman Edward C. Yagle. His growing wealth got him involved in motorsport, including sponsoring local racer Ray Keech for him to chase the World Land Speed Record. That gave Yagle her first taste of motorsport and she seemed hooked.
To say that women were not welcome at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway in that era – at least professionally – would be an understatement. Women were banned from the press and pit areas until 1971 (and that was thanks to the force of journalist Denise McCluggage), and no women got behind the wheel until Janet Guthrie was eligible to join the contest. iconic racing in 1977. was allowed to help sponsor cars or get involved with a team in other ways, but when it comes to really encouraging women to meaningfully participate in the running of the race, it’s not. no one is willing to help women.
Until Yagle.
In 1928, Yagle purchased a rear-wheel drive car owned by the late Frank Lockhart, IndyStar reported, and entered car racing under the name MA Yagle in an attempt to prevent her from attracting attention as a woman. She hired Ray Keech, the former World Land Speed record holder and whom Lockhart was trying to beat at the time of his death, to drive the Miller Simplex Piston Ring Special in 1928, and the machine was a resounding success, winning three of the six races it entered that year – but the Indy 500 has yet to be shortlisted. Keech had a mechanical problem and he finished in fourth place.
However, the following year was much more successful. Again, Yagle joined Miller Simplex in the 500, keeping her highly successful racer into the 1929 season.
The Indy 500 of 1929 was one of the transition prizes. It was the last event to be contested with a 91.5 cubic-inch engine, and also saw a healthy mix of front- and rear-wheel drive, with the front-wheel-drive engine taking the lead. predominance in qualifying. Keech, on his rear-wheel drive, started in sixth place. In the first year, no one used horsemen.
In the first 10 laps of the race, Keech rose to second but was forced to make a long stop on lap 21 to change tyres. However, his pace is still as impressive as it was at the start: he returned to the field in 10th place and quickly began to take the lead. Stopping three minutes later in the race to refuel and change the remaining three tires did not hinder his momentum, and he won by a margin as leader and defending champion Louis Meyer lost fuel pressure on lap 157.
Keech’s triumph is one of history books. As he celebrated on the winning lane, however, his record-breaking team’s owner, Maude Yagle, could do nothing but watch from the stands.
However, this story is not exactly a happy one. By the time Yagle joined in 1928, newspapers quickly figured out her true identity. From IndyStar:
But Universal Service’s Ray Priest news service took notice and published a story titled “Goshalmighty! Now look where the women are cuckolding! The story says that “weak sex invades the speed game for no good reason, but it makes up the story.”
Yagle’s 500th win should have silenced her critics, but Keech’s reign as champion lasted just over two weeks. On June 15, 1929, Keech was involved in a fatal crash at the 200-mile Altoona Race on the boardwalk in Pennsylvania. The details of the four-vehicle crash are difficult to analyze, and many different versions of reported events. A driver hit the safety rail, sending it down the tracks. It’s not clear if Keech hit the railing himself, hit another car trying to avoid the railing, or both. Reports agree that he was thrown from the vehicle, but whether he was crushed by his own chassis or by another driver is unclear. What used to be However, it became clear that Keech was already dead when the doctors arrived. Allentown Newspaper, PA morning call reported that he was killed while driving the Simplex Special.
Yagle repair car and hired a new racer, Jimmy Gleason, to compete just three months after Keech’s death. He flipped his car during a race at Mineola Fairgrounds in New York and crashed serious injury. Newspapers reported that Yagle, who witnessed the crash, was taken to hospital in “convulsions and shock”. Both recovered and they teamed up again to complete the 1929 season in October.
In 1930, Yagle hired a new face in Farmer Frank, but now it’s rumored that Yagle’s car is cursed — but to Farmer and the other drivers who operated the machine, the rumors were a mess at best. The Farmer was able to set a new lap record at Langhorne Speedway, an earthen oval in Pennsylvania, but the changing tides made it impossible to compete in the race. Indianapolis 500. However, when it started to compete on local tracks, the Yagle-Miller Special was so coveted that drivers were willing to overlook its supposedly bad fate.
And then, in August 1932, Farmer Frank collided with another racer during a heat race. Both drivers died, and after seven years, Yagle’s car was finally hidden.
From there, it’s hard to know what happened to Yagle – but there’s no record of her ever participating in another race as a car owner. No one reported her reaction. We can’t say for sure Why, exactly, she withdrew from motorsport, but in obituary After her death in 1968 at the age of 85, there was no mention of her racing endeavors.
Yagle isn’t the only woman to enter a car in the 500 laps, but she’s certainly still the most successful, which can be a sobering despite considering more than 100 years of racing at Indianapolis. Her place in history deserves recognition; then we can really start chasing our next race winning women’s team owner.
