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