Everybody’s always looking for the next big thing. Ken Snyder turns the spotlight on the upwardly mobile 17-year-old apprentice who has dazzled at Oaklawn Park this winter
When most six-year-old boys were wheeling around on bikes in their neighborhood, Tyler Bacon at the same age was riding ponies on a Crow Indian reservation in his home state of Montana.
“We just did that all day until the sun went down. I was pretty much around horses my whole life,” says Bacon.
Looking forward, he’s probably still going to be around them for most of his life – on Thoroughbreds. Bacon is a 17-year-old apprentice jockey currently lighting up the tote board at Oaklawn Park. In the first two months of this year his purse earnings were $1.4 million, nearing the $1.5m he earned in 2024 in his first full year in the irons.
He began at 16, the earliest age necessary for licensure in Nebraska, and first rode at Harrah’s Columbus NE at the tail-end of 2023. He was winless in ten starts and few could have predicted how well he would do as he moved on to Fonner Park, Prairie Meadows and Oaklawn, in that order, in 2024. With that level of earnings last year allied to his explosive start this year, the obvious question is – just how good is this young man?
Hall of Fame trainer D Wayne Lukas, for whom Bacon has won six races at Oaklawn, hedged only slightly when asked if he was the best apprentice to ride for him. “You got to remember I started Luis Saez and Gary Stevens,” says Lukas, lending context to the comparison.
For certain, Bacon’s performance to date in a tough jockey colony prompts speculation as to whether he can reach the heights attained by those two riders.
Lukas first noticed Bacon not in races, as you might expect, but during morning workouts. “I thought, you know, for a young bugboy, he sits a horse well and has good form on a horse,” adds Lukas.
Character and attitude
“I’ve always taken an interest in trying to get these young riders started if they have the right character and the right attitude, and they are appreciative of what you can do for them.”
After meeting Bacon, Lukas said he “checked all the boxes”. Bacon also possesses something that would seem standard practice for riders but unfortunately isn’t. “I think that his strength is probably that he listens,” says Lukas.
The youngster is therefore an exception to what the late trainer Charlie Whittingham said about jockeys: “Half of them won’t listen, and the other half won’t do what you tell ’em.”
For Bacon, it’s a simple proposition. “I'm just doing what the trainers tell me,” he says.
The trick, of course, is getting the horse to go along with the plan. That’s where skill and natural talent come into play, something in short supply for the majority of riders.
It seems too good to be true, especially for a 17-year-old, but there’s no cockiness that accompanies his success. In fact, his modesty might exceed his talent. “I make a lot of mistakes out there. I’m just trying to learn from them,” he adds.
Lukas will attest to his teachability. “I’ve coached him after every time he’s ridden for me, and when he rode for other people,” he says. “I’ve caught him in the tunnel and I’ve said, ‘Look, you know you did this, or you did that’. He accepts the criticism very well.”
His first ‘start’, and the seed that planted dreams of a jockey career, was at the annual Crow Fair in Montana, which attracts a crowd of around 50,000.
“They have horse racing out of the gate,” says Bacon. “My uncle had a little Quarterhorse that he put me on, and I won. That’s when I wanted to become a jockey.”
Persistent and prescient
Bacon continued working with his uncle before a persistent and prescient friend opened the door to a jockey career.
“I had a buddy at Fonner Park, and he kept calling me and saying a jockey agent [Andy McKay] wanted to take my book, so I went.” With typical modesty he adds: “I did pretty good.”
Pretty good was finishing seventh in the Nebraska track’s jockey standings. Maybe more importantly, he got noticed by plenty of trainers at Fonner, riding in 155 races. He also drew the attention of one trainer a thousand miles away. Jon Arnett, at Delta Downs in Louisiana, saw more than ‘pretty good’ watching Bacon through simulcasts.
“Tyler was riding 7-1, 5-1 shots, and finishing second and third. And then he’d win a race,” says Arnett.
“He was bringing in horses who really didn’t have a shot, and it seemed like he was always in the right place at the right time. If his horse was [blocked] on the rail, it just seemed like the rail would open up for him.
“In some way, he just had a sense of where he needed to be in a race.”
Where he needed to be career-wise, after Fonner Park, came about when Arnett called jockey agent Brian Assmann to tout Bacon. The agent took Bacon’s book at the start of the Prairie Meadows meet that ran May to September, and despite stiffer competition in the jocks’ quarters Bacon passed the million-dollar mark in earnings at the Iowa venue.
“There were little fields and there was a bunch of room out there. I learned a lot,” says Bacon.
He finished ninth in the standings with 36 wins, a none-too-shabby 13 per cent wins-to-rides, and earnings of $1,021,165. By comparison, seventh place at Fonner had earned Bacon $180k.
That success was a factor in following his agent’s advice and taking on Oaklawn Park, a meet with one of the best jockey colonies during the winter months. “I thought I’d try it out, and I really wasn’t too intimidated,” he says.
Techniques and pointers
He is well liked in the jocks’ quarters at Oaklawn and, as journeyman jockeys are wont to do with a respectful apprentice, they’ve helped him with techniques and pointers. “I’ll watch the replay after the race, and they’ll tell me what I can do better,” he says, “switching sticks and things like that.”
Cristian Torres and Rafael Bejarano, the top two in the standings at Oaklawn this winter, have been of particular assistance to the young rider, who is currently fifth in the list just ahead of Ricardo Santana.
While Bacon seeks mentoring, he already has something that can’t be learned or explained: horses run for him. The best anyone can figure is that it comes, at least, from good hands that you either have or don’t have. A very good-to-great jockey will feel through the reins what a horse is going to do, what it needs them to do, how much gas is in the tank, and much more.
Bacon’s connection to horses occasionally baffles his agent. “He’ll work a horse and tell me, ‘Man, this horse worked nice, and I really like him’,” says Assmann.
“In the back of my mind, I know the horse’s form looks terrible and not many people would ride this horse, but he will ‘get run’ out of them.”
Immediate future
Bacon’s immediate future involves losing his ‘bug’ – 5lb apprentice allowance – some time in April, by Assmann’s estimation. Then there’s the decision on where to take his tack when the Oaklawn meet concludes on May 3, Kentucky Derby day.
He has become a favorite not just of Lukas but other Churchill Downs-based trainers such as Chris Hartman and Randy Morse. That could influence him to move on to Keeneland in April ahead of Oaklawn’s closing, followed by Churchill Downs in May. There’s also the option of going back to Prairie Meadows for the summer.
“He’s not a rider that needs to be in Iowa,” Arnett states flatly, even though he trains at Prairie Meadows and could benefit from Bacon riding his horses there.
“I think he needs to go on now. He’s young, and the road always goes in two directions. He can always come back.”
It will be fascinating to see the destination Bacon chooses. Of the top ten jockeys to date at Oaklawn, eight are Churchill Downs regulars, one rides there frequently, and then there is Tyler Bacon.
Given the task of predicting where Bacon goes from those stats, perhaps the choice seems obvious.
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