The only horse he rides these days is on a country trail near his home in Apache Junction, Ariz., often early in the morning before temperatures soar. Life is different these days for Russell Baze, North America’s all-time winningest rider, than it was in June 2016, when he shocked the racing world by announcing his abrupt retirement at the end of the Golden Gate meeting. There was no farewell day, or winner’s circle ceremony. Baze walked away from the sport, on his own terms. “If I’d have said anything they would wanted to have a big to-do,” he recalled in late May. “I wasn’t into that. That wasn’t me.” Baze dominated the jockey standings in the Bay Area racing for decades, and the venues for his greatest successes were Bay Meadows in San Mateo and Golden Gate Fields in Albany. Bay Meadows closed in 2008. Golden Gate Fields will have its final day of racing on June 9. “It’s sad,” Baze said. “It seems like so many racetracks are closing, the racetracks I rode at.” A glance at Baze’s statistics reveals the depth of his supremacy. He won 54 riding titles at Golden Gate Fields, 14 more than he recorded at Bay Meadows. Of Baze’s 12,842 career wins, over 3,000 more than any other North American jockey, 5,765 were achieved at Golden Gate Fields. On a Thursday in April 1992 at Golden Gate Fields, Baze won seven races from nine mounts, a record for victories on a single card in Northern California and one that he equaled with seven mounts at the San Mateo County Fair at Bay Meadows in August 2006. Baze led the nation’s riders in wins 13 times from 1992 to 2014. He was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1999. The milestones would not have been as plentiful if Golden Gate Fields had not installed a Tapeta Footings synthetic surface on its main track in the fall of 2007. Baze was a quick fan of the surface. “When they went to the Tapeta, it became my favorite track,” Baze said. “That was the best surface I’ve ridden on other than Longacres.” Baze said he favored the Longacres Racecourse surface in Washington state because “horses got a good hold of it and it had a lot of cushion.” The surface at Longacres, which closed in 1992, was not as good in rainy conditions, in his opinion. The Tapeta surface at Golden Gate Fields, Baze said, was different, and its installation lengthened his career by nearly a decade. “Before they put in Tapeta, I wondered, How much longer do I want to do this?” he said. “I was hitting the ground with alarming frequency. It kept me in the game longer than I thought.” When Baze left racing, he stayed away. He lived in the Bay Area for a few years after retiring before moving to Apache Junction, east of Phoenix, in 2020. It was a memorable summer to relocate. Not only was much of society closed because of the pandemic, but Baze recalled that the Phoenix area recorded 52 days of temperatures of 110 or more that summer. “Welcome to Arizona,” Baze said. :: Bet the races with a $200 First Deposit Match + FREE All Access PPs! Join DRF Bets. These days, Baze says he does not follow racing closely, but does keep in touch with friends involved in the sport, particularly in the Bay Area. There was a recent family trip to Turf Paradise in Phoenix, but it was not an official journey by any means. Baze, 65, blended in with the crowd. “We took the kids on a lark to Turf Paradise,” he said. “No one said anything. We kind of flew under the radar.” After Golden Gate’s closure, racing will shift to the fair circuit, beginning with a four-week meeting at the Alameda County Fair in Pleasanton, about 36 miles from Golden Gate Fields. Baze knows Pleasanton well. In the final decade of his career, he won the riding title at the fair meeting every year from 2006-14 and finished third in 2015, his final season at the track. This fall, after the California fair circuit concludes, Pleasanton will run a nine-week autumn meeting to replace Golden Gate Fields’s position on that part of the calendar. “Golden Gate was good to me,” he said. “I enjoyed riding there. I’ve got a lot of friends there. “It’s sad, but hopefully they can use those fair tracks and Northern California can have a viable circuit.” Aside from trail rides, Baze said he enjoys retirement. He volunteers for the Pinal County search-and-rescue team, which required a qualification process. “I never got to serve in the service because I started riding at a young age,” Baze said. “I had some extra time and wanted to be in service.” Even with Phoenix nearby, Baze’s life is one very much amid the countryside of the American Southwest. His neighborhood includes a street named Sixshooter Road and a nearby mountain range. “We couldn’t get any more Western,” he said. Days often start with trail rides, his equine connection. “We get out as early as we can,” Baze said. “It’s been in the 90s the last week or so. Nineties is not bad. When it gets to 110 . . .” :: Want to learn more about handicapping and wagering? Check out DRF's Handicapping 101 and Wagering 101 pages.