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This was published 8 years ago
By Andrew Webster
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There's no place for spin at the racetrack, although there are plenty of well-spun war stories.
You are prodded to talk to "flamboyant Kiwi" Michael Walker, jockey for the highly rated Criterion in the WS Cox Plate at Moonee Valley on Saturday afternoon, about the day the pig fell on his head.
The story sounds too good to be true. One of those yarns that grows each time it's told.
So tell us about the day the pig fell on your head, Michael, you ask with a chuckle.
The flamboyant Kiwi doesn't laugh. You soon realise it was no laughing matter.
"I had a pig accident, falling 70 metres down a cliff on May 19, 2008," the 31-year-old explains. "I had a pig on my back; a hundred pounder. I didn't make the jump, from one side to the other. I fell 70m and was in a coma on life support. I had bleeding in 30 different places on my brain. My friends and family and my partner were told I wasn't going to make it on numerous occasions. Then they were told, 'And if he does survive, he will never ride again. He won't walk or talk. He will be in a wheelchair and he will be a vegetable'.
Um, come again? You fell 70m?
"Seventy metres," Walker repeats. "I'd been pig hunting with mates and I fell 70m. But I defied all those odds."
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Then Walker changes tack, adopts a high-pitched voice like he's channelling Eddie Murphy on stage, and says: "I just say, 'Wassup now?' "
Oh, that's right. Almost forgot. The other tip on Walker was that he's also M.A.D.D. Fearless rider, who will take horses into gaps where others won't. But also in possession of a sharp tongue, sharp dress sense and covered in tattoos.
"Yep, I'm colourful," he says. "I don't care. I don't give a f---. I am who I am. If you don't like me, go away."
No, we're not going anywhere death-defying, pig-hunting, sharp-dressing Kiwi jockey. We'll take the rock-star footballers with a grain of salt.
But in the buttoned-down world of thoroughbred racing, where most jockeys have the personality of a dial tone, where stewards tut-tut if they wave their whip too excitedly in celebration, we'll take the flamboyant hoop with something to say.
And there's much to the story.
There's a long way to go but his life thus far reads like something out of a Hollywood movie, with Johnny Depp a certainty to play the leading role.
He grew up in Waitara in New Zealand's North Island , and was so good as a teenager he was given a special dispensation to start riding in races at age 15 instead of the normally required 16.
In that first season, he notched 131 victories. He didn't just claim the apprentices championship but the jockeys' premiership, too.
Then he went out and won all over the world, in Hong Kong, Malaysia, Japan, Singapore and Macau.
He crossed the ditch, like so many of the good ones from New Zealand, in 2004 but in Australia he also found trouble.
He admitted on New Zealand TV to snorting cocaine for breakfast and drinking like a fish during his early days riding in Melbourne, a confession that infuriated Racing Victoria chief steward Des Gleeson at the time.
There were stories of crashed Mercs and a wild lifestyle.
"It was only when I was going out, but I never turned up to a race day under the influence of drugs," he told The Age's Peter Hanlon in an interview in 2010.
Wassup now?
Walker says he doesn't look back at his past, but on the eve of what could be a career-defining moment, in the weight-for-age blockbuster that is the Cox Plate, he will certainly reflect on it.
"When I was younger, I wasn't wise enough, I wasn't strong enough. I didn't listen to the people who tried to guide me. I went my own way, thinking I knew what was best. I didn't. If I knew what I know now when I was younger, I wouldn't be riding. I'd have made my fortune. I made it when I was younger and then blew it. It was a rollercoaster, mate, and I was going a hundred miles an hour and I had no brakes."
He returned to New Zealand to re-establish his life and career. He did so, but the "flamboyant Kiwi" wasn't as accepted at home as he was in Australia.
"In New Zealand, tall poppy syndrome is really bad," Walker says. "I honestly don't find that in Australia. In New Zealand, people were very critical because I am really flamboyant. People in New Zealand didn't like that. They love flamboyancy here. I find in Australia, the better you are the more they want to make you better. Sportsmen here are treated that way. They make you feel like you are better. In New Zealand, they think you are selfish. In New Zealand, they look at you and think, 'Who's this prick?' "
Nick Kyrgios might raise of point of order on that one. Shane Warne, too.
Then Walker pulls himself up, and knocks the bravado back a gear.
"But please quote this: I didn't help myself," he says. "I made a lot of bad decisions."
One man who has backed him more than anyone else is trainer David Hayes, who has been supportive since Walker returned to Australia in 2010 but more so than ever in the past year.
"I'll tell you one thing: Dave's not a jockey but he's helped me with my riding as well," says Walker. "He's made me ride a bit coolly, instead of riding in spurts. He's helped me be more consistent with advice on what I'm doing. It's like being an apprentice again."
It was Hayes and co-trainer Tom Dabernig who also brought Walker to stable star Criterion, the striking chestnut who was transferred to them after owner Owen Glenn, the Kiwi billionaire (although he denies he's worth this much), fell out with David Payne the day after last year's Cox Plate.
Walker did all the hard yards on Criterion last autumn, but lost the ride heading into The Championships at Randwick to Craig Williams because of suspension.
In the Queen Elizabeth Stakes, Walker finished fifth on stablemate Spillway as Williams and Criterion claimed the $4 million race.
"That cost me about $120,000," Walker says. "I was going to ride him and then I got suspended, so it feels like unfinished business for me. It should have been me but it wasn't. It was heartbreaking. But, like I say, I never look back to the past because sooner or later you are going to get a sore neck."
This time, though, the planets are aligning. Walker won on Criterion in the Caulfield Stakes, which catapulted them into favouritism at one point for the Cox Plate.
If Walker can triumph, you sense it won't just make up for the missed chance in the Queen Elizabeth but all the others along the way. He's always been in a hurry. His time might be about to arrive.
"If anything, I came back 12 months too early from the pig accident," he confides. "I wanted to prove the surgeons wrong that I could ride again. I didn't take the necessary steps to recover. I've been back to the place where I fell, too. I broke down. I looked at it, and I broke down. I was on the verge of breaking the record of riding 200-plus winners and I was well on target. But at the same time, I thank God. He gave me another chance, and my career, and life again. I was supposed to die. I got to live again."
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