Born in Canterbury, England, Michael Hole moved to the United States in 1961 where he rode professionally for fourteen years, winning 2042 races while riding horses to earnings of US$13,520,479.
In 1975, Michael Hole was the principal rider of Dearly Precious, helping to guide her to that year's Eclipse Award as the American Champion Two-Year-Old Filly.
[3] On April 22, 1976, Michael Hole was found dead in the front seat of his car in a parking lot at Jones Beach on Long Island, not far from his home in Garden City, New York.
Much speculation about Michael Hole's death followed when a major scandal erupted involving mobster "Fat" Tony Ciulla, a member of the Boston, Massachusetts Winter Hill Gang who admitted to paying jockeys to fix hundreds of races at New York tracks and five other states in 1974 and 1975.
In the 1960s and '70s, he was a top jockey earning more than $100,000 a year and he and his wife Yvonne maintained a home in Garden City, New York, a place in Miami, Florida for the winter racing season, and owned a farm in Maryland.