Jerry Bailey
Jerry D. Bailey (born August 29, 1957 in Dallas, Texas) is an NBC Sports thoroughbred racing analyst and a retired American Hall of Fame jockey. Early years Bailey was born in Dallas but raised in El Paso. He had a pony as a child and became interested in thoroughbred racing at age 11 when his father, James, a dentist, claimed some horses at nearby Sunland Park Racetrack in New Mexico. Bailey took his first racetrack job at Sunland a few years later as a groom for trainer J.J. Pletcher and an occasional babysitter for Pletcher's son, Todd, then in the second grade, who later would follow in his father's footsteps and eventually become America's most successful trainer. Bailey's first official ride came on November 2, 1974, on Pegged Rate at Sunland. That horse finished unplaced, but Bailey won with both his mounts the next day, scoring his first career victory aboard Fetch. He had no grand ambitions: "I didn't think I'd ever leave New Mexico", he says. The next year, Bailey was the leading apprentice jockey at Sunland and Ak-Sar-Ben, where he rode his first stakes winner, Pletcher-trained 3-year-old filly Bye Bye Battle, in the $25,000 His Majesty's Council Handicap on May 24, 1975. After briefly attending college that fall at the University of Texas at El Paso, Bailey returned to the saddle to be leading apprentice at Oaklawn Park in 1976. In the fall of 1976, Bailey moved his tack to the south Florida circuit of Calder Race Course, Gulfstream Park and Hialeah Park, and over the next few years he also made stops at Hollywood Park, Monmouth Park, Hawthorne Race Course and Arlington Park. In 1982, Bailey began riding regularly at the major New York tracks – Belmont, Aqueduct and Saratoga – while returning to Florida in the winters, a popular circuit he would continue riding the remainder of his career, and would later dominate. Career accomplishments Regarded as one of the world's all-time greatest jockeys, Bailey's mounts won 5,893 races and $296 million during a 31-year riding career. At the time of his retirement in January 2006, he ranked No. 2 on the career North American money list and still ranks No. 3. He won each Triple Crown race twice (his winning Kentucky Derby rides through traffic on Sea Hero in 1993 and Grindstone in 1996 are considered two of the best in modern Derby history); scored a record five wins in the Breeders' Cup Classic, the richest race in the U.S.; notched a record four victories in the Dubai World Cup, the world's richest race; and is the only jockey ever to win America's Eclipse Award for Outstanding Jockey seven times, including an unprecedented four straight years (2000–2003). Bailey had many prominent mounts, but will be best remembered as the regular jockey of Cigar, who tied the modern North American record for consecutive wins at 16, including an undefeated Horse of the Year campaign in 1995 capped by a win in the Breeders Cup Classic. The