RACING: Brian O'Connor says the champion jockey's attempt to fill Michael Kinane's shoes at Ballydoyle remains a work in progress
As championship rewards go, Jamie Spencer must have felt he was getting a raw deal when he was kicked in the stomach by a mulish two-year-old in the Aqueduct parade ring last month.
Lying waiting for the medical attendants, the 24-year-old could also have been forgiven for wondering what he was even doing at a non-descript meeting on a cold New York November afternoon.
It was only days since he had been crowned Ireland's champion jockey for the first time in his meteoric career. After months of all-out effort, Spencer might have been expecting to put his feet up for some well-deserved R&R. Instead, he was back at school.
Having been heavily criticised for some high-profile gaffs during his first year as the number one jockey to Aidan O'Brien at Ballydoyle, there was no laurel to rest on for the young rider. Instead, he was in the United States learning the idiosyncrasies of racing - American style.
Spencer bounced back from the kick to ride in both Japan and Hong Kong towards the end of the year, but the pains of growing into probably the most coveted job in racing were an enthralling constant of 2004.
If Azamour's epic victory in the Irish Champion Stakes was the single individual highlight, then Spencer's struggle to fill the shoes left by Michael Kinane was a daily show that had highs and lows to match any soap opera. A runaway triumph in the jockeys' championship included some exceptional displays of judgment, initiative and raw strength. But the year also included more than one example of getting it badly wrong when it really counted. Spencer remains a work in progress.
He wasn't helped that the 2004 classic crop from Ballydoyle wasn't a patch on some previous years, and for much of the season the only Group One triumph was that of the four-year-old Powerscourt. He also wasn't helped by the fact that probably the most gifted of the three-year-olds was Antonius Pius.
Blessed with enormous talent but cursed with a temperament to make Marilyn Monroe seem stable, the colt threw away the French 2,000 Guineas by trying to demolish the running rail and lost a Breeders' Cup Mile by trying to find a rail at Lone Star Park in order to do the same thing.
However, Spencer had no one else to blame for Powerscourt losing the Arlington Million in the stewards room and for a Breeders' Cup Turf ride on the same colt that beggared belief in terms of judgment.
How he brings the lessons of 2004 into play next year will be of immense interest.
Also back in 2005 will be Azamour and the other outstanding three-year-old Irish colt, Grey Swallow, who notched up a notable success for Dermot Weld and Pat Smullen in the Irish Derby.
Throw in the remarkable Vinnie Roe, who pulled off an outrageous Irish Leger four-timer, and there are a hat-trick of reasons for flat race fans to look forward to the New Year.
Bringing off four-timers on the National Hunt scene is, in theory, a lot more likely, but if there was a bring-the-house-down moment in 2004 it had to be Florida Pearl's emotional triumph in February's Hennessy Gold Cup.
It was three years since the last of the old boy's three-in-a-row, but age, injury and the doubts of all those sceptics counted for nothing as Richard Johnson guided him over the last couple of fences to have even the hardest cynic reaching for the Kleenex.
There wasn't to be a last pop at the Gold Cup, but that provided its own bit of history with Best Mate becoming the first since Arkle to make the hat-trick.
Understandably, much of the focus was on the horse's trainer, Henrietta Knight, and those endless pub debates about how Best Mate isn't fit to lace the water of an endless list of past heroes.
But what shouldn't be forgotten was the "balls of steel" ride given by Jim Culloty. Briefly stopped in his run before the straight, Culloty, who never deviated from the inside throughout despite the terrible pressure, remained ice cool and got the job done in circumstances that would have fried the brains of many others.
There was no such expectation on Conor O'Dwyer when he partnered the outsider Hardy Eustace in the Champion Hurdle, but there was an authority to the partnership's victory that left few surprised at a subsequent follow-up in Punchestown.
Kieren Fallon's year makes the Disneyland roller-coaster look like the Bog of Allen. An Epsom Derby-Oaks double and a Breeders' Cup were among the ups, but the troughs included losing his title to Frankie Dettori and an arrest in a race-fixing probe that still hangs over the sport in Britain.
Compared to those headlines, racing in Ireland boasts a game that is in robust good health, so much so the authorities decided an all-weather track in Dundalk for 2006 is an answer to the problem of too many horses being balloted out.
But possibly the most welcome first of 2004 was Catherine Gannon's achievement in becoming the only woman to win the apprentice jockey's title. Not even the worst flat-earther in racing, and, amazingly, there are some, could begrudge her.
