Tom Cannon Sr. (April 1846 – 13 July 1917) was a British flat racing jockey and trainer.

[1] For most of his career, Cannon was attached to the yard of John Day Jr., at Danebury by the side of Stockbridge Racecourse in Hampshire.

Day provided Cannon with first classic win in the 1866 1,000 Guineas aboard a filly called Repulse.

He also rode for his younger brother, Joseph Cannon and was associated with the stables of John Porter and James Ryan.

[5] In 1887, after Archer's death, trainer John Porter turned to Cannon to take the ride on "horse of the century", Ormonde.

In what Lord Arthur Grosvenor called "the most splendid finish ever seen on a racecourse",[8] Ormonde beat Minting by a neck with Bendigo further back.

In the twilight of his riding career, he became retained jockey for Scottish millionaire, George Alexander Baird.

Morny went on surpass even his father's achievements, winning the jockey's championship six times, whilst Kempton too won classics.

[2] However, the demise of that venue, which closed when part of the land it lay on passed to a lady who disagreed with horse racing, also spelt the end of his training career, given Danebury's proximity to the course.

[1] Cannon has been described as "a beautiful horseman with the lightest of hands"[2] and "imperturbable, a shrewd technician and a wonderful judge of pace.

"[10] Amongst his colleagues, he was regarded as a "polished" performer, and a peerless handler of young horses[1] and, as he demonstrated with his multiple Oaks and 1,000 Guineas victories, of fillies.

Time after time, Cannon has won races when other jockeys would have left off riding Conversely, what some saw as perfect finishing, other saw as the main fault in his riding – his habit of trying to win races by a narrow margin to protect a horse's handicap mark, which, when he got it wrong, was known to cost him winners.