By MIKE DILLON
In the red corner you have Michael Walker, 16 years old and already a champion in the saddle.
In the blue corner there is Ken Browne, exactly half a century older, but in the ring for the same reasons.
No, not the boxing ring. These icons are not opponents, they are running, or riding, parallel paths, albeit about as far apart as you can be in racing.
No one mistook Ken Browne for Shane Dye in the saddle when the remarkable 66-year-old rode his 100th career steeplechase winner aboard Lost In The Rain in Saturday's $10,000 Rhind and Gardiner Steeplechase at Trentham.
Walker, on the other hand, looked every bit the next Shane Dye when annexing Dye's record first year in racing with his 79th winner at Blenheim on Friday.
Yet this unlikely pair are inextricably linked - their love affair with the horse as an animal rather than a necessary ingredient of racing, is total. Unquestioned. Deep beyond meaning.
Ken Browne knows nothing else. Doesn't want to. Fine wine, partying or holidaying in exotic locations rate zip alongside schooling a promising horse over a tough fence in freezing temperatures on a Cambridge winter morning.
He ran away from boarding school to do it and it has made him a millionaire.
Like all champion apprentice jockeys, Michael Walker is right now receiving adulation from the racing industry, but as nice as that is, he says, it does not even begin to compare with his love of the horse as an animal.
"I have always loved them totally. I always knew I would somehow end up working with them," said Walker.
"Horses have always been for me."
Walker turned 16 less than three weeks ago and has another close parallel with Opie Bosson, the "older statesman" of the apprenticeship ranks.
Unlike anyone else in the last 20 years, the pair looked like senior jockeys in the saddle from day one.
The popular term for that - a natural - does not do the talent justice.
"Yes, I guess I have always been aware of being a natural because my boss [trainer Alan Sharrock] told me I was, right from the start," said Walker yesterday, with no attempt at false modesty.
The easiest path in the racing world is for lauded young apprentices to get big-headed. It has ruined many promising careers. Bosson and Walker are exemplary examples of how to avoid it.
Walker makes a conscious effort to keep things in perspective.
"You read the stories and that's nice, but you don't have to believe them. I don't believe my own publicity."
But he does believe in himself. He won't automatically tell you he is good, but you can extract it from him.
"I am aware of it, yes. When I'm suspended I watch racing on television and I see apprentices sitting three wide in races.
"I'm not being big-headed, but if you go back through all my racing videos (and he's had 680 rides) you'll almost never see me three wide in races. My boss always drilled into me that if I was caught three wide to go forward or drop back, but never sit there and I don't."
Walker's ride to land hot favourite Zapeace home at Rotorua on Saturday may have looked like a slog in the bog, but it was a gem.
Early in the home straight it appeared Zapeace may not pick up the leader Pretty Wicked.
Most apprentices would have drawn the whip, so would most jockeys, but Walker sat quietly and waited.
"I knew she was better than them and I knew if I waited she would eventually outgun them with class."
It was something you would expect from a Dye or a Cassidy.
As nice as Browne felt about riding his 100th steeplechase winner, merely being there still doing it meant more.
He doesn't dwell on it, or even discuss it, but it is clear Browne was hurt by a stipendiary recommendation two years ago that he retire.
He was prepared to take the issue to the Human Rights Commission if necessary.
In reply to a Wellington Racing Club presentation to mark Saturday's achievement, Browne made a touching speech, during which he declared his belief racing was "the best thing a family could do."
The poignancy was that Browne lost one of his two sons, Roger, in a horse accident in Sydney in 1982. His other son, Alan, captained the New Zealand polo team.
While Browne will doubtless continue to churn out some of New Zealand's finest jumpers when he retires from race riding, a large part of his life will retire with his raceday saddles.
Yesterday he declared, with some glee and a small amount of defiance, that while he can do justice to riding certain horses he will keep going, but clearly the end must be somewhere in sight.
He is not much more than three and a half years short of 70. A 70-year-old riding competitively over fences is world news.
Browne and Walker have another close parallel - they list ice cream as their favourite food.
Browne has lived on it almost exclusively and Walker says it is his favourite indulgence.
Walker admits he's a rugby, racing and beer kid, but racing's emphasis on weight means he goes light on the ice cream and ignores the beer, because there is a million dollar pot waiting for him.
Achieving it is something you would like to be betting on.
Racing: Common thread to rising star and maestro
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