Breeders' Cup wins Gary Lynn Stevens (born March 6, 1963) is an American Thoroughbred horse racing jockey, actor, and sports analyst.

His career successes were intertwined with significant injuries and periods of temporary retirement, mostly due to knee problems, from 1999 until 2000 and again from 2005 to 2013.

He returned to riding by mid-October 2014, accepted mounts for the 2014 Breeders' Cup, and rode a winning race by mid-November 2014.

[7] As a seven-year-old child, Stevens had to wear a brace for 19 months due to a degenerative disease of the hip, Perthes syndrome.

At age 16 he switched to Thoroughbreds, and at 17 won his first race at Les Bois Park, in Boise, Idaho on Little Star, a horse trained by his father.

After leaving high school, he spent four months in southern California working for horse trainer Chuck Taliaferro, who had helped develop other young jockeys, including Steve Cauthen and Cash Asmussen.

He went on to Longacres, near Seattle from 1982 through 1984, where he won 524 times, including a number of graded stakes races, broke numerous riding records and was the leading rider two years in a row.

[6] Returning to Southern California in 1984, he began winning Grade I races and rode his first Kentucky Derby on Tank's Prospect in 1985.

He fell short of winning the Triple Crown in 1997 when he won the Derby and Preakness with Silver Charm but came in second in the Belmont.

The following year, he picked up his second Belmont win on Victory Gallop, in turn denying a Triple Crown to Real Quiet.

[5] He reached his official 5,000th North American win at Santa Anita Park on February 13, 2015, on a horse named Catch a Flight, trained by Richard Mandella.

[20] He retired briefly from racing for ten months in 1999–2000 due to knee problems,[14] but returned after a rest and credited what was his first comeback to the use of nutraceutical supplements containing glucosamine and chondroitin.

[22][23] Hall of Fame sportscaster Jack Whitaker described it as: "a great read, not only for horse racing fans, but for anyone interested in how the American dream really works."

His decision was again linked to knee problems, but he reached it a week after Rock Hard Ten, whom he rode to a second-place in the 2004 Preakness Stakes, was retired due to a foot injury.

In the 2003 movie Seabiscuit, Stevens played jockey George Woolf, receiving generally positive reviews.

[25] He had assorted small parts in other works, including brief appearances in the TV series Jockeys and Wildfire[26] In 2011 he became a regular cast member on the HBO television series Luck produced by Thoroughbred owner David Milch, starring as an on-the-skids jockey named Ronnie.

The cancellation of the show in 2012 prior to the beginning of its second season turned out to provide Stevens with the inspiration to return to actual race riding.

His first major accident was a starting gate training incident in 1985 when a horse threw him into the rail, putting him into a coma for 16 hours and causing serious injuries to his shoulder and right knee.

[39] Three months after the operation, he returned to racing, working horses in the morning, and accepted mounts for the 2014 Breeders' Cup.

In 1997, Stevens entered the National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame and in 1998, he was voted the Eclipse Award for Outstanding Jockey in the United States.

[50] In 2013, he won the Big Sport of Turfdom award from the Turf Publicists of America, recognizing his contributions to the enhancement of Thoroughbred racing news coverage.