Troy Bayliss (born 30 March 1969 in Taree, New South Wales, Australia) is an Australian motorcycle racer. During his career Bayliss won the Superbike World Championship three times, as well as the British Superbike Championship and a MotoGP race, all with Ducati. He finished his career after winning the 2008 World Superbike title. His 52 World Superbike victories are second only to Carl Fogarty.

Troy did much of his growing up in the Northwest NSW town of Warialda, where his father, Warren, was a baker, and his mother Lorraine drove a local school bus part-time. The family lived in Apollo Ave, across from the local high school. By age 10, Troy was an accomplished motocross rider, and could often be found riding through the local bushland which surrounded the town and came right up to the back of the family house. The family moved to Taree when Troy was about 11 years old. Bayliss showed much promise as a youngster in the sport, however when he entered his teens his enthusiasm for racing waned. He commenced an apprenticeship as a spraypainter at Joe Berry's and commuted to work by bicycle. On this daily commute Bayliss would pass a motorcycle dealership and finally was tempted enough to obtain a loan to purchase a Kawasaki ZXR 750 on which he commenced racing. He won the first race he entered on the bike and performed well in subsequent events. As a result of this early success and despite the financial risk he was taking, Bayliss decided to compete in the Australian Supersport championship, Age 26.

After finishing as runner-up in the Australian supersport championship in 1995, Bayliss moved up to the Australian Superbikes series the next year, finishing third that year and second in 1997.

His big break came that year – he was entered as a wildcard for the 1997 Australian 250 Grand Prix riding for the Dutch Arie Molenaar Suzuki team. On a significantly underpowered machine compared to his competitors, Troy finished in sixth despite exiting the final corner in third place, such was the lack of power of his machine.

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