It’s never been hard to like Michael Walker. He’s just infectiously engaging, whether as the champion jockey he always was, or just one of us, which he now is.
He’s always been everyone’s “Cuzzy Bro” right? He once had a clothes brand - "The Cuz" - naturally!
He wants to love and embrace you like that cousin in that typically big Māori family.
Even when he couldn’t love himself - the essence of this story.
So, at a time where his former jockey mates and the industry battle whether there should be payment for riding in jumpouts, Walker, one of its greatest stars and truly popular talents, is aiming to drive trucks, as he deals another litany of personal traumas to a life story that script writers would shudder as ridiculous fiction.
After all - what other jockey’s bio could feature the phrases “pig shooting accident” or “cut my leg off”?
And we haven’t touched on the brain, his brain, not his race brain. but what's left of what he's got after that stellar career in the saddle.
For completion, add 25 group 1 wins, some 2500 plus career winners, those records that James McDonald broke in New Zealand before becoming the "world's best jockey", were Walker's. And he had re-written Shane Dye's before that - as an apprentice.
With him came the spunk, the ability, the belief, all wrapped with the rare gift of personality to match - not just for his, but for racing’s advantage.
That John Cena "You Can't See Me" wave after every winning interview, ok pinched from the great WWE showman who said it means "I'm so good, strong and fast..." but made comfortably as his own signature play by Walker and you wouldn't think any other jockey could try it, let along pull it off.
But that fall in a Pakenham jumpout in 2022, left his brain functioning at 65 percent, in his own terms, now that needing to dissect his latest dramas. He was forced to concede his saddle in February last year.
Yet his heart has remained beating as fast and normal and if there is a beyond, it’s in Cuzzy’s chest.
Celebrating son Kash’s third birthday Wednesday, who could understand what that Walker brain was dealing with.
A new marriage (and associated children) is stressed, possibly falling apart, a real cousin, father of three, Jesse, was seriously injured in a Frankston incident earlier in the month, shot in the head.
Like many a gifted sportsman with a gift of the gab, the media was his transition to the next stage of life but now even that remains in limbo as Racing Victoria restructures their racing.com umbrella and Walker may be left out in the rain.
He is now taking YouTube lessons on how to drive front-end loaders and large trucks, which he hopes may become his meal ticket or at least where was the next meal coming from, not just for him, but for the kids, here and the two back home in New Zealand, Kase and Layla, their names and birth dates eternally tattooed on his forearms, yet they are still an eternity away, except from that brain and that rich heart and his thoughts.
He thanks The National Jockey’s Trust being there to underpin some mortgage payments as he awaits sale of his Botanic Ridge home in Cranbourne, while the traumas play out.
R U Ok day has come and gone, back in September. But some bizarre (misspelt, almost unintelligible) posts on his Facebook page, this week had many friends concerned re where “The Cuz” was at.
(Apologies would eventually follow, but after a day or so of serious grief and concern.)
It was a terminus where no-one would want to stop, let alone be on that line. But Walker has sadly been there before.
“I’ve been ripped to shreds the last few weeks mate,” Walker would say, not looking for pity, but in a typically honest and open tone.
“It’s like my heart has been shot out of a cannon.”
You can mention the number for Lifeline and others human carers right here, Walker has been there before, not on speed dial, but without the dramatics that have led him to their door, and without him even knocking.
He recalls his "brother from another mother" Cory, childhood friends in Waitara New Zealand, who grew apart, Walker in the saddle, Cory in Perth until he rang in distress. Walker sent him money for a plane ticket, Cory never showed, he'd taken his own life.
Walker had to arrange the traditional Maori funeral ceremony, open casket. He still had Cory's clothes today.
If not for those tattoos on his arms with those kid's names, Walker admits he might have gone the same way.
And now his latest traumas!
“I’m just not the same person anymore,” Walker says.
“My marriage (to Lauren, the mother of Kash and Kai) is just about over, physically I can’t run with the kids. My knees, my hip, all that, I forget things straight away, I try and keep reminders, but they are gone before I remember, I’ve tried to learn new things, but it’s always hard to hold on to them given my brain,” Walker says.
There have been gambling and alcohol issues, but never denial.
And there is never a sense of “why me” in Walker.
He had it all, he gave it all. And he will give it all again. He does it every day.
No grudges either, not even as to where he is at today, not personal, as hard as that must be, not professionally, as the unknown future might be.
It is probably why Walker has got this far, with more than the gifted talent so rare.
He’s just turned 40, the kid that walked into Colin Jillings stables as an 11-year-old in borrowed oversized shoes, to be told he’d never make it.
He did, and oh, how.
Those junior records. With senior results.
In his first year as an apprentice (the 1999–2000 racing year), Walker had an astonishing 131 wins to not only win the apprentices’ championship but the jockeys’ premiership as well (his first of three).
Some three New Zealand Derbies would come, two Australian Cups, a Blue Diamond's, a 100-1 shot in a Caulfield Guineas, stars like Criterion, warriors like Prince Of Arran and those gallant teases in the Melbourne Cup, now just notes in the record books which Walker struggles to read and remember today.
Even J-Mac would say: "When we were growing up, he was the pin-up boy and extremely gifted on any sort of horse.
"He was incredible, the most gifted horseman.”
Walker would ride 653 winners as an apprentice, the most famous sportsperson in New Zealand, even when golfer Michael Campbell, a future US Open winner, it was Walker who was Sportsperson of the Year.
Of course, with fame came the temptations of drink and drugs, gambling (pokies, not horses) even.
But not expected was a dead pig falling on your head and almost being left for dead. It was 2008, fell 70m down an embankment, the story has been well covered, but remains as remarkable now as distressing then.
Meant to die? Coma, life support, meant to never talk or walk if he survived, a vegetable, of course he’d never ride again.
Sounds familiar. But he did.
Until try 2021, a "nothing" fall at Pakenham, and a leg injury, a fractured fibula and torn ACL.
But a “Compartment Syndrome” diagnosis – a painful condition where pressure builds up in muscles due to internal bleeding or tissue swelling – led to a pain that had him calling for his own amputation.
But it’s that optimistic positive brain that has sadly been dampened, he’s got a leg left to stand on, so to speak, but as a former jockey, and one of the sport’s most gifted, the NJT, has provided him a real safety net in times that few could imagine even consider.
“I know that part of my life is over (riding), but I have so much more to offer, my kids mean everything to me, and if it’s driving a truck rather than riding a horse to make that work, then that’s what I’m doing.
“I’ve realised I’ve got too much left to live for rather than to think about the other option again. I've been there before.”
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