James Forman Sloan was born in Bunker Hill, Indiana, near Kokomo, the son of a Union Army soldier.

By 1886, Sloan was working at Latonia Race Track in Covington, Kentucky, where trainer Sam Hildreth gave him the opportunity to ride one of his horses.

In 1896 he moved to New York City after being hired by "Pittsburgh Phil", where within a short time he was the dominant rider in the thoroughbred racing circuit on the East Coast.

Ridden by Sloan, the horse won the Lawrence Realization, easily defeating Kentucky Derby winner Plaudit, then scored the most impressive win of his career in the 2¼-mile American Brighton Cup.

[2]) Returning to England the following year he won a number of important races including the 1899 1,000 Guineas aboard Sibola and in 1900 the Ascot Gold Cup riding Merman for owner, Lily Langtry.

Sloan's success on the racetrack, combined with a flamboyant lifestyle filled with beautiful women, made him one of the first to become a major international celebrity in the sport.

His reputation was such that he was the "Yankee Doodle" in the George M. Cohan Broadway musical Little Johnny Jones and the basis for Ernest Hemingway's short story My Old Man.

After Sloan left racing, Oscar Hammerstein arranged for him to star in a one-man show in a New York vaudeville theatre, but it did not last.

Financial problems from overspending on a lavish lifestyle forced Sloan to sell the bar and return to the U.S. His money gone, in 1920 he tried acting in motion pictures, but by then his name no longer had the star value to carry him.

Married and divorced twice, Sloan died of cirrhosis in 1933, aged 59, in Los Angeles, California, and was interred in the Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery in Glendale.