RACING CHELTENHAM COUNTDOWN: Brian O'Connorprofiles Ruby Walsh, who can now be compared only to the legendary names in the history of the sport

NAME RECOGNITION can be a double-edged sword. Just ask all those Adolfs and Osamas out there. But, in sports terms, Ruby Walsh has a handle singular enough to make him identifiable even to those for whom racing is a tangled and mysterious web of jargon and complexity. So on the run-up to Cheltenham 2010, it’s just as well the most dominant personality of the festival is also the best-known.

It doesn’t hurt that, along with his name, Walsh also holds a talent singular enough to put him on the verge of history.

At just 30 years of age, he needs just one more festival success to equal Pat Taaffe’s all-time record tally of 25. Considering the Irish champion jockey managed an unprecedented tally of seven last year alone, it’s safe to assume the hold Arkle’s partner holds on that particular slice of history is tenuous.

With an eye-wateringly impressive book of rides that includes reigning champions Master Minded in the Champion Chase, Big Buck’s in the World Hurdle and the magnificent Gold Cup-holder Kauto Star, the man who admits his life has been plagued by the Kaiser Chief’s hit Ruby better be prepared for a few more raucously out-of-tune but fervently roared choruses next week.

In its own insubstantial way that, too, emphasises how the intense, grey-haired figure is venturing into virgin territory.

On the flat, a half-hearted attempt to wrap Sister Sledge’s Frankie around a young Dettori in the 1990s died the sort of death that in a perfect world the song would have suffered too. Lester is a name that is still evocative nearly two decades after his retirement, but putting Piggott’s lone-gunslinger image to music is more epic-Morricone than singalong-Minogue.

In more substantive terms, however, the sense that “Ruby-Ruby-Ruby-Ruby” is taking the job of jump jockey into uncharted waters is as real as the other stuff is facile.

“There has never before been a jockey in the position that Ruby is now, having the two top yards of Paul Nicholls and Willie Mullins on either side of the water. And I don’t think it will happen in the future either,” says Enda Bolger, the cross-country specialist trainer. “That’s what is so unusual about him.”

Bolger has watched the schoolboy who visited him on weekends to ride out become what he describes as the most complete jockey ever seen in National Hunt racing.

He is not alone in that view. Charlie Swan insists: “Ruby’s the best we’ve ever seen, by a long shot. He has everything. He’s a good judge of pace, he’s got great hands, he’s brave. It’s all there.”

It’s that combination that has made Nicholls and Mullins, the champion trainers of Britain and Ireland, settle for sharing their number one stable rider, and the result is an unprecedented concentration of equine talent in one jockey’s hands.

“Here in Ireland Ruby is way in front of any other jockey. I would say Tony McCoy is his only competition,” says Mouse Morris, a Gold Cup-winning trainer and former leading rider. “I’d take either one of them. I hate comparing jockeys of different generations. But Ruby is right up there on the top shelf with the Johnny Francomes and the Tony McCoys. What they all have in common is the full package – brains, talent and hunger.”

That only reinforces the view that Walsh is now at a place in his career when the only worthwhile comparisons are with the legendary names in the history of the game. It’s the same vibe that surrounded Sea The Stars last year: superior to his contemporaries, the only way to quantify his talent is to reach for the totemic figures of the past.

In his own ruthlessly bullshit-free way, the man at the centre of Cheltenham 2010 would dismiss such efforts to quantify his impact on the sport as largely irrelevant. A devotee of the philosophy that the only race that matters is the next one, Walsh doesn’t often indulge the fanciful.

That was noticeable during a Late Late Show appearance this winter alongside Brian O’Driscoll and the boxer, Katie Taylor. Fluent and amusing when he chooses, Walsh played the game with Ryan Tubridy until refusing to join in with a populist Thierry Henry-bashing session in the immediate aftermath of that World Cup goal in Paris.

“Do you not think that man,” he asked, nodding at O’Driscoll, “would stand offside if he thought he could get away with it? Get over it.”

O’Driscoll laughed: “Check out Roy Keane at the end!”

Certainly Walsh has more in common with Keane’s suspicions of the trappings of racing fame rather than Dettori’s cuddly public persona. Not as blunt as his famously-outspoken father, Ted, he nevertheless instinctively pursues the line of not suffering those he considers fools. Unlike his colleague Barry Geraghty who always appears laid-back and faintly amused at those who take the business of one horse passing a red lollipop in front of another so seriously, Walsh is famously focussed on controlling as much as he can of a famously unpredictable sport.

In possession of all the required toughness to be a jump jockey – he memorably returned within four weeks of having his spleen removed – it’s his mental resolve that will be most tested next week.

Meeting your own high standards is stressful enough, but with popular adulation comes even more pressure to perform and Walsh will be the single most zeroed in on figure during the four days of the festival.

It isn’t that long since Tony McCoy’s failure to hit the festival scoresheet until the very last day resulted in a mood so morose it provoked some pundits into pondering his mental stability. The festival can give, but it also demands.

“He’s a cool dude. That’s how I’d sum him up,” says Bolger. “I think he takes all this stuff in his stride. He’s a family man now (a daughter, Isabelle, with wife Gillian) and is settled, not that he was ever wild anyway. Things have fallen so right for him that I think he just goes and does his job. We’re not talking about somebody like Richard Dunwoody, who in his prime was a bit of a maniac. This guy has a far better temperament.”

That is part of the reason Walsh is so in demand from other trainers once he is not required by either Mullins or Nicholls. He can more or less take his pick of outside rides, and that always has the potential to ruffle feathers.

It was noticeable when Walsh won last November’s Hennessy on Denman, beating Welshman Sam Thomas on What A Friend, that the vast majority of jockeys who were crowded around the press room television at Fairyhouse were shouting “Come on Sam”.

There are also occasional rumbles that of course he rides so many winners because he has the best of ammunition, an accusation scornfully addressed by Mouse Morris who retorts: “He’s had to be good enough to get that ammunition. Anyone else could have it too – if they were good enough.”

The man who has probably felt the impact of that ammo more than anyone is McCoy, Walsh’s great rival and friend. Walsh often stays with McCoy when in Britain and the two Irishmen have a unique sporting relationship. While friendship is forgotten out on the track, it is easily resumed off it.

But while McCoy continues to dominate the quantity game in terms of winners, it must be a sore point that the quality train continues to resolutely go down Walsh’s tracks.

“You really can’t compare the two of them. It’s like trying to compare Kauto Star with Arkle. They are two completely different riders,” says Colm Murphy, whose Brave Inca was ridden to Cheltenham Champion Hurdle glory in 2006 by McCoy. Walsh won the Irish Champion on the same horse last year.

“Ruby is a complete jockey. He has everything. I remember the winning of the Irish Champion Hurdle was actually the race before that when Brave Inca got beaten. Ruby came back in and told us everything we needed to know about what to do next. That sort of feedback is invaluable,” Murphy believes.

“It’s the same whether it is a maiden hurdle or a Grade 1. He always seems to be in the right place at the right time. He has a clock in his head. You know if he drops one out that they are going too fast in front,” he adds. “I’m sure Ruby has his moments. He is no different to rest of us. This is a high pressure job and you have to get results. But he is a total professional.”

Bolger, the man who supplied Walsh with his first winner over fences, believes the jockey would be a success in whatever profession he chose, but also believes Walsh picked right.

“He really is someone for young fellas to look up to, the way he’s able to change his whip hand like a flat jockey, all that power and drive he gets in a finish. When I was a kid, my idol was John Francome. He was such a stylish rider over fences. He changed the style of riding completely with a tidier seat. Before him fellas used to lean back going over a fence and it just looked untidy.

“Then along came Dunwoody, and then McCoy, who is brilliant, a real punters’ jockey. But Ruby has it all. Francome’s finish, for instance, wouldn’t have been near half as good as Ruby’s.

“And he didn’t rob it or steal it either. As a kid he would have been so well schooled by his Dad,” Bolger says.

It is 15 years since one of the first pieces of evidence of that schooling was seen in a bumper at Leopardstown on Young Fenora, a famously difficult ride who earned a place in the history books that her resolution hardly justifies as the first winner Ruby Walsh rode for Willie Mullins.

“I wouldn’t know a hurler or a footballer if they hit me in the face. But I know a jockey and I just thought to myself, ‘that’s not ordinary stuff’,” Mullins later remembered.

He saw it first but it will be obvious to everyone – even the “Ruby-Ruby-Ruby-Ruby” crowd – next week.

And considering he was christened Rupert, Walsh can console himself that the chants could be worse.