As the racing season hurtles headlong into another spring carnival, starting with Caulfield Guineas day on Saturday, Bailey is busying himself in his new career. He has reinvented himself as a greyhound trainer.
“I was always involved with greyhounds,” he says. “My dad trained greyhounds. I used to travel around everywhere, betting on the dogs and the trots and the horses.”
“I’ve got between now and Christmas to show myself that I can do this. If I can do it to a standard that I can survive, then I’ll give it another 12 months because I’ve got so many beautifully bred group one pups. And if I can’t, I’ll stop. I’m not going to waste money.”
Bailey says one of the hardest things about losing his job was losing the regular income. Despite that, he says, he does not hold a grudge.
“I could see the writing on the wall with the restructure [at Racing.com],” Bailey says.
“I knew it was coming. When you’ve been in the game that long, you can read the tea leaves.
“There was a push to get rid of me because I was seen to be too outspoken and don’t play by the rules. And they wanted to get down to four race callers, not five, and I was the second-highest earner outside of Matt Hill.
Terry Bailey spends a lot of time with his greyhounds as part of his new career.Credit: Paul Jeffers
“So it made me a pretty easy choice. If you’re going to knock someone off, knock off the bloke that gives you more headaches than the other blokes.
“I said, ‘No hard feelings. I understand. You won’t get any shit out of me’. I don’t look at negatives. Why should I be upset? I’ve had a great career. I’ve got nothing to complain about. I’ve got no angry bone in me.”
The 61-year-old Bailey’s can-do attitude was forged over a lifetime of lucky breaks and setbacks.
He says his ability to cope with adversity was strengthened 10 years ago when he had a shock brush with cancer. During an ultrasound for “tummy pains”, the technician found a blob on his kidney by “absolute fluke”.
“The specialist said, ‘If this bloke didn’t accidentally find the cancer, you would never have known until it was too late’,” Bailey says.
“So he took the kidney out. And then I got divorced, and I said, ‘From now on, I’m going to do what I want to do’.”
A father of three grown-up children – Michael, Sarah and Martyn – Bailey says he started calling the greyhounds as a 13-year-old in Grafton, NSW.
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“I sounded like a chipmunk,” Bailey says of his teenage years, “and then after a few good years of smoking and drinking bourbon, I got the voice.”
Things happened quickly for the young caller. He was recruited by Clarence River Jockey Club, progressed to 4TAB in Queensland alongside Wayne Wilson, and then replaced John Tapp as Sky’s No.1 caller in Sydney.
After being axed by Sky, he made his way to Victoria in 2005 to work under Bryan Martin at TVN and has worked in this state ever since, often courting online controversy because of his willingness to “say it as it is”.
“I used to get smashed because I was opinionated,” Bailey says.
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“I’d be calling races at Moonee Valley, and I’d get a tweet, you know, after the race or before the race, ‘You’re the worst caller in Australia. I hope your head blows up’, you know, stuff like that all the time.”
He soon realised it was pointless fighting back against online trolls and the “no-hoper grubs”.
“You can’t beat idiots,” he says. “So I got off Twitter, all social media. I don’t have any interest in it at all, and that changed my life dramatically. It allowed me to shake the shackles right off and just be myself, you know, no pressure.”
Bailey might have shunned the online world, but he never turned his back on greyhounds. Even when he was calling, he was topping up his kennels.
“If I had a win on the punt, I’d buy some dogs,” he says.
Before long he had 44 greyhounds on his rental property at Cranbourne South.
Terry Bailey called races professionally for more than 40 years.Credit: Getty Images
“The dogs escaped and chased some horses,” he says. “They dug through a fence. They lifted the wire, dug through the fence, and then took off. And the neighbours dobbed me in.”
The great escape happened at the same time Bailey lost his job. But he was thrown a lifeline by friend and horse trainer Mick Kent, who helped him lease of a farm at Yarragon, between Warragul and Moe, off jockey Campbell Rawiller.
Now, Bailey works one day a week at Racing.com, hosting Tuesdays With Terry, and then is full-time with the dogs – training for a wide range of people, including renowned thoroughbred owner Ozzie Kheir, Warrnambool horseman Tom Dabernig as well as 20 Southside Racing trainers such as Peter Moody, Annabel Neasham, Natalie Young and J.D. Hayes.
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“I spend a lot of time with the dogs,” Bailey says. “I’ve got a chair and I sit out in a big paddock, and I let a big heap of them run together, and they all come up in turns and give me a cuddle and a pat and everything like that.
“I got all my little pups, you know, and I can go in straight away and pat them, and they’ll jump on me, and they love me picking them up and giving them a cuddle.
“I’ve got one at the moment, who’s the runt of the litter, and she is a beauty. God, she’s a good dog. She’s full of personality. She’s fearless, she eats like a Trojan, she’s just incredible, yeah, just an incredible pup.”
The change of fortune does not end there for the upbeat Bailey. Thankfully, he says, his mechanic was able to find a new alternator for his Hyundai Santa Fe.
“He ended up getting one second hand and threw that in and the car’s good as gold,” Bailey says.
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