48 Facts About Jerry Bailey

Jerry D Bailey was born on August 29,1957 and is a retired American Hall of Fame jockey and current NBC Sports thoroughbred racing analyst.

Jerry Bailey is widely regarded as one of the greatest jockeys of all time.

Jerry Bailey 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.

Jerry Bailey began riding Quarter horses at the age of 12 and started riding Thoroughbreds competitively at 17 in 1974.

Jerry Bailey took his first racetrack job at Sunland Park as a groom for trainer JJ 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.

That horse finished unplaced, but Jerry Bailey won with both his mounts the next day, scoring his first career victory aboard Fetch.

Jerry Bailey had no grand ambitions: "I didn't think I'd ever leave New Mexico", he told an ESPN interviewer.

The next year, Jerry 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.

Jerry Bailey won each Triple Crown race twice ; and scored a record five wins in the Breeders' Cup Classic, the richest race in the US, along with other Breeders' Cup categories, totalling 15 victories in all, a record Bailey shares with only Hall of Fame jockey Chris McCarron.

Jerry Bailey earned 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.

Jerry Bailey had many prominent mounts, but will be best remembered as the regular jockey of Cigar, who tied the modern North American record for sixteen consecutive wins, including an undefeated Horse of the Year campaign in 1995, capped by a win in the Breeders Cup Classic.

Jerry Bailey was inducted into the American Racing Hall of Fame in 1995.

Jerry Bailey was chosen by his peers to receive the George Woolf Memorial Jockey Award in 1992, which honors riders whose careers and personal character earn esteem for the individual and the sport of racing.

Jerry Bailey won the All-Star Jockey Championship in 2001 and 2004 at Lone Star Park.

Jerry Bailey had never before ridden Arcangues and was given the ride only nine days before the race.

Jerry Bailey glanced at the odds board during the post parade and decided he needed to stay close to the rail as long as possible in hopes of cracking the top five positions on the board.

That year, Jerry Bailey won a career-high $23,354,960 million in purses, a North American record that stood until broken in 2012 by Ramon Dominguez.

Jerry Bailey scored 109 victories in Saratoga stakes races, including 35 Grade 1 wins: the Test Stakes, Hopeful Stakes, Whitney Handicap, Alabama Stakes, Travers Stakes, Forego Handicap, Go For Wand Handicap, Sword Dancer Invitational Handicap, Personal Ensign Stakes, Jim Dandy Stakes, King's Bishop Stakes and the Ballerina Stakes.

Jerry Bailey won the Grade 2 Bernard Baruch Handicap seven times, and the Grade 2 Lake Placid Stakes six times.

Jerry Bailey's most enduring and successful professional relationships were with Hall of Fame trainers MacKenzie Miller, Bill Mott and Frankel, and with Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al Maktoum, the ruler of Dubai who with his brothers and family operates a global racing and breeding powerhouse.

Jerry Bailey made a stop at Miller's barn every morning for coffee and conversation, and riding for Miller and owner Paul Mellon helped take his career to new heights.

Jerry Bailey rode Fit to Fight, who in 1984 swept what was then known as the New York Handicap Triple with wins in the Metropolitan Handicap, Suburban Handicap and Brooklyn Handicap.

We were running into each other and Jerry Bailey wanted to ride a few.

Jerry Bailey began riding regularly for Frankel in 2000, after parting ways with his longtime agent Bob Frieze and hiring Ron Anderson, whose connections and handicapping talents would help fuel Jerry Bailey's best seasons.

Jerry Bailey had won only one previous stakes race for Frankel nearly four years earlier, but asked Anderson to contact the trainer and try to get the mount.

Three weeks later, Jerry Bailey gave what he called one of the best rides of his life on Chester House in an Arlington Million win that would be the horse's final race.

Frankel's stable rapidly developed into one of the strongest in the sport's history, and Jerry Bailey became a key element in its success.

Jerry Bailey won eight stakes races on Sightseek and seven on Intercontinental.

Jerry Bailey won the second running of the then-$4 million race for Sheikh Mohammed aboard Singspiel, who was running on dirt for the first time.

Jerry Bailey rode Godolphin's Worldly Manner to a seventh-place finish in the 1999 Kentucky Derby, giving up the mount on winner Charismatic, whom he had ridden two weeks earlier to win the Lexington Stakes at Keeneland.

Jerry Bailey consulted with Dettori about the horse, then rode him to an impressive victory.

That fall, Jerry Bailey rode Fantastic Light to a win in the Man O'War.

Jerry Bailey teamed with the Maktoums to win the $6 million World Cup in 2002 on Godolphin's Street Cry, when Dettori decided to ride the stable's Sakhee instead.

Almost three months later, Street Cry and Jerry Bailey won the Grade 1 Stephen Foster Handicap at Churchill Downs.

Jerry Bailey was vilified by many racing fans for his ride on Eddington in the 2004 Belmont Stakes, which Birdstone won with a late surge to deny wildly popular Smarty Jones a Triple Crown sweep.

John Servis, trainer of Smarty Jones, accused Jerry Bailey of "sacrificing" Eddington.

Jerry Bailey, who wore a Wrangler patch on his right leg during his 2003 Belmont Stakes win aboard Empire Maker, was scheduled to wear the same patch in the 2004 Derby but his mount Wimbledon was scratched the day before the race with an injury.

When ESPN discontinued its horse racing coverage in 2012, Jerry Bailey moved to NBC.

Jerry Bailey rode Dee Dee's Legacy to a second-place finish behind Tribal Chief, ridden by Sandy Hawley.

Jerry Bailey thinks about it, he works at it, he doesn't smoke, drink or stay up late.

Jerry Bailey wants to be as good as he can be for as long as he can do it.

Jerry Bailey often knew how a race would shape up and what the other riders would do.

Jerry Bailey met New York-based SportsChannel reporter Suzee Chulick when she interviewed him in the Hialeah Park winners' circle after his victory in the 1984 Flamingo Stakes with Time For a Change.

Jerry Bailey says he took his last drink on January 15,1989, and continues to regularly attend Alcoholics Anonymous meetings.

Jerry Bailey became a jockey because he enjoyed the thrill of competition more than anything else, and horses were a means to that end.

Jerry Bailey was often so focused on recalling the tactics and analyses he had studied to prepare for a race that he didn't socialize beforehand, and chose not to go out partying with other jockeys after races.

Jerry Bailey donated $19,000 to the Jockeys' Guild Disabled Fund when he won the Preakness in 1992, and again the next year after winning the Derby.

Jerry Bailey championed the use of flak jackets, protective vests worn by jockeys to protect against injuries to the torso and especially the spine.