Back in the glory days of Australian racing, there was a saying that, if you just threw your racing silks through the door to the Jockeys Room, you would be happy with whoever came out wearing them and ready to ride your horse. That was how high the general standard of the riders was. If you look at the state of the art in the Jockeys Room in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane at the moment, we can’t be far off that situation right now.

There was clear evidence to support the idea in the weekend’s racing in Melbourne and Adelaide in particular, due in particular to a couple of masterful rides by Michael Walker. With all respect to Michael, and recognising that he is one of Australasia’s top riders – given that he is an Australian-based Kiwi, I have to say that – even he would have to say that he pulled off a couple of his better efforts on Harlem, and then on Fanatic, in two of the biggest races of the long weekend.

In the Australian Cup, at Flemington on Saturday, he hugged the rails in a perfect trailing position until putting Harlem into the right gap at the right time to nail Gailo Chop convincingly. A great ride! Then to put the cherry on the cake, he bettered that ride with his effort on Fanatic in the Adelaide Cup. Watch the race, and it is obvious that the difference between first and second was his ride. That’s not to say that Craig Williams’ ride on the second placegetter, Ormito, was shabby. It wasn’t. But Williams had no option but to take Ormito around much of the field – the horse was hanging for the last 800 metres – whereas Fanatic didn’t go round a single horse from about 100 metres after the start. They say that George Moore used to blow a whistle to clear the other riders off the rails. Michael Walker must have one as well, judging on yesterday’s effort. The difference at the finish was about a neck, with Ormito definitely closing, but Fanatic had to have picked up a 3-length break on Ormito rounding the home turn. That was clearly the difference in the rides. Watch the replay, and Ormito was definitely the unlucky one, mostly by his own creation.

Now, let’s go back to the beginning.

Michael Walker is one of the top riders. He’s not the top rider. By all current assessments, Hugh Bowman has to be given that tag. But he’s not far behind. Neither is Tye Angland, Damien Oliver, Glynn Schofield, Tim Clark, Jeff Lloyd, Craig Williams, Mark Zahra, Dwayne Dunn, Brenton Avdulla, Corey Brown, Kerrin McEvoy, Blake Shinn, Damian Lane, Regan Bayliss, Ben Melham, Jason Collett – and the list goes on and on, with not a lot of a quality drop for a long way before you get to the young guns like Andrew Adkins, Ben Allen, Ben Thompson and others. And if you cross the passage and heave the silks into the female Jockeys Room, are you going to be bothered if Jamie Kah, or Kathy O’Hara, or Linda Meech, or Claire Lindop (sad to see her retiring from race riding, really), or Tegan Harrison, or Sigrid Carr, or Lucy Warwick, or Katelyn Mallyon walks out wearing them? The thing is, also, that there seems to be just as many female young guns coming through, as there are males.

So, it’s been a long time since the quality of the riding ranks has been so consistently high. It can only get better, as the competition between riders gets tougher. Competition breeds consistency and creativity, and that means better riders, better racing and a better spectacle for racegoers.