DANVILLE, Calif. (Jan. 28, 2022) – Longtime Northern California trainer Bill Delia passed away on Thursday. He was 75.
Delia, with 975 training wins and career track earnings of $16.7 million, trained Grade III California Derby winner I’m a Jewel in 1997, multiple stakes-winning California-bred Bai and Bai and, most recently, multiple stakes winner Bettor Trip Nick.
“She was probably my favorite,” Delia said of Bai and Bai in California Thoroughbred magazine in 2017. “She was not a big, robust filly, but she sure could run. My clients did very well with her.”
Delia was named 2019 Trainer of the Year by the California Thoroughbred Breeders Association.
Delia began training in 1985 after 20 years as a jockey, riding often for the legendary Farrell Jones.
His biggest earner was another Cal-bred, multiple stakes-winner Central Heat, who pocketed $458,602 on the track. Truce in Balance, another Cal-bred stakes winner, earned $355,087 for Delia.
Delia was affectionately known as “Wild Bill,” a nickname he said he earned as a Southern California jockey.
“We used to get kind of wild when we were partying up a little bit,” he said, “and I liked to jump up on a table and dance. When I got up here, I became known as ‘Wild Bill’ and it just sort of stuck. I still dance a little, but I don’t do it on the tabletops anymore.”
His family moved Delia from New Jersey to California at the age of 10, starting out in El Monte, where relatives convinced him that his small stature made him ideally suited to be a jock.
“I didn’t know what the hell they were talking about,” he said. “A jockey? What’s that? They said, ‘Well, they ride horses.’ I’d never seen no horses, you know? Maybe on a TV Western. So, I go to the races with them. We went to Santa Anita and as soon as I saw the horses and the races, I was hooked immediately. I said, ‘Wow.’ I was so enthralled with everything, I made them take me to the track every weekend. I was crazy about it. I wanted to learn everything.”
He said his father would pick him up from school and take him to the race track on race days. I worked in a pizza shop after graduating and through a customer met a barber who owned horses. He began working as a groom. He started exercising horses for Gary Jones, then was an assistant for Jones’ father, Farrell. Delia rode for Farrell Jones and Keith Stucki.
He won his first race as a jockey at Golden Gate in 1968 on Pesty Knight, trained by Stucki. Injuries to his knees and back led to his transition to trainer. Delia estimated that 75 percent of the horses he trained were Cal-breds.
Married three times, Delia had six sons.