KING GEORGE VI CHASE: Greg Woodtalks to Ruby Walsh who has just returned from major surgery in record time and is raring to get on with what he does best - winning big races

HE WILL be the focus of a thousand Christmas wishes at Kempton Park on St Stephen's Day, a people's champion in the battle with the credit crunch, and at Fontwell Park yesterday Ruby Walsh was everything they could want him to be. Fit, eager, relaxed and ready, Walsh will pick up the reins on Kauto Star on Friday, confident that his partner will win a third consecutive King George VI Chase.

It is barely a month since Walsh was carried away from a fall at Cheltenham on a stretcher, with his spleen ruptured beyond repair and about to be removed. In any other profession, it might have been a moment to take stock. But not in this one, least of all when you are at the peak of your powers, with the best horses in Europe waiting to welcome you back.

"I've been injured before," Walsh said yesterday. "You come back, you ride on, so what? It was only four weeks.

"For me, it wasn't that major anyway. They found it [the ruptured spleen] straight away, they took it out, so now move on. You can't change the past, you can only affect the future."

But isn't a ruptured spleen potentially fatal? "Potentially it is, but that's if it's not detected for 10, 11, 12 days. It was detected so quickly in me that it never got near to being life-threatening.

"If I'm watching a horse [that I would have been riding] and it falls, I'll watch to see Sam [Thomas, his deputy] get up, and watch to see the horse get up, and then think, 'Didn't miss a winner, then'. You're always thinking of the big days, the big horses and riding winners. You're not thinking about falls, and I don't think you ever accept that you're going to have falls. You don't go thinking 'I've got 15 rides coming, so I'm going to get one'.

"If you're thinking 'I'm going to get a fall, I'm going to get hurt, but I want to be a jockey' then you're never going to start, and there's no point if you do."

Retirement, clearly, is the last thing on Walsh's mind. "Some people just wake up and don't want to go on, but hopefully that won't happen to me for a long, long time.

"A lot of people get injured and can't carry on. Richard Dunwoody was nowhere near ready to retire, and I don't think Mick Fitz[gerald] was either.

"They are two high-profile jockeys, but there are so many at the other end of the scale who have to retire that people have never even heard of. But that's just life, some are luckier than others."

Kauto Star too has plenty of winning still in front of him as far as Walsh is concerned, even if the bookmakers and punters are less convinced after his fall at Haydock last month. He has started at 4 to 6 and 8 to 13 for his two previous wins in the King George, and the victory 12 months ago was arguably the finest performance of his career. This time, though, he is odds-against. "It doesn't make any difference to me if he's 6 to 4 on or 6 to 1 against," Walsh says, "because I know what kind of horse he is. He ran a bit flat at Haydock, but that said, if he hadn't made the mistake at the last, I think he was going to win.

"I schooled him last Thursday and he was super, he felt great. They can make him what price they want, and it's opinions that keep racing going, but there's a lot of horses that I ride that are 1 to 3 when they should be 3 to 1, because of who's training them or who's riding them.

"I thought Papillon had a great chance in the Grand National when he was a 40 to 1 chance, and he ended up nearly favourite when he won, but it wasn't going to change the way I was going to ride him. It's about the chance you give them yourself, and I think Kauto Star has a great chance."

Walsh has now won two Nationals, and a Gold Cup on Kauto Star too, but if there is a secret to his success, it may lie in his determination to keep improving for as long as he is riding. "You can always improve, get neater, tidier, fitter, stronger," he says. "But you have to get lucky at times, too. The ball has to bounce for you.

"If you take it all for granted, you do stupid things. I was going around Stratford in the summer, head down, going for better ground on the outside, trying to conjure up some sort of run to win, then suddenly, I'm sailing over the water jump.

"That was as stupid as anything I've ever done, but that's why I think that even at my age you have to keep improving and keep your eye on the ball.

"Because there's always the ones coming behind you, and you've got to keep ahead of them. When I was 19, I was chomping at the heels of Charlie Swan and Conor O'Dwyer, trying to get up to their level, so it's the young ones coming behind that keep you on your toes.

"I was that young fella once, but now I'm the one looking over my shoulder."

• Guardian Service