RACING: Michael Kinane does not believe the jury is still out on Hawk Wing. "Is it? I don't know why." Nor does he think the sceptics have a case when they point to the last furlong of the Epsom Derby and Hawk Wing's head reaching increasingly high for the sky. Brian O'Connor reports

"Your head would be coming up too in the same situation." Ireland's top jockey doesn't do bullshit very well. Never has. The game is too serious and too demanding for him to tolerate too many hooray-henrys for long. So he doesn't.

Many are those who have approached only to be sent into headlong retreat by a flash of the famous Kinane glare. We're not talking inscrutable Chinese here: when Kinane thinks someone's a tosser, they know.

In the current sporting climate, other comparisons with that favourite scion of Mayfield, Mr Keane, are more than just timely.

Kinane, too, was a schoolboy boxer. He also has a resolute sense of place: not even Sheikh Mohammed could lure him away from home when the Dubai gig was the top show in town.

That famous driving, all-consuming determination, which first attracted the Sheikh, has been seen in too many finishes from Ballinrobe to Belmont to be taken as anything else but read. And Kinane even counts Alex Ferguson among his greatest admirers.

"I'm competitive mentally no matter what I do. I don't expect to lose." Like Keane, the man is obviously intelligent and is also capable of a disarming charm. But a crucial difference between the two will rarely be more evident than at Leopardstown today.

Journo's are fond of definitive statements and using phrases like D-Day.

Nevertheless, it would be hard to overestimate this weekend's action in the context of Ballydoyle getting its hitherto overpowering juggernaut back into top gear.

Coughing in any racing yard can sound like doom. When it is hundreds of millions worth sticking their glossy heads over the door and whooping for Ireland, then it's understandable if nerves start to strain. At Haydock today, the French 2,000 Guineas winner Landseer (Kieren Fallon) reappears in the Sprint Cup. Tomorrow Kinane will don Ferguson's red colours and renew his partnership with Rock Of Gibraltar in the Prix du Moulin.

Hawk Wing will have more binoculars trained on him than any other in the Food Island Champion Stakes and just for spice the $3.5 million, Group One winner Sophisticat will have a spin in the Matron Stakes.

As cast lists go it could be called the Longest Day. In racing's silly little world, there might even be as much riding on it.

"It's natural enough that people will be nervous because we're not completely sure what the horses are going through. They seem fine but nobody will really know until they're put under pressure," says Kinane.

"Most stables in Ireland have got a blast of this thing this year and we were probably the last to get it. It seems a short-term thing but no one knows for certain.

"It has been tough for Aidan (O'Brien) to deal with because he has never had to do it before. It's been going so good for so long up to now," he adds.

O'Brien has been known to get wound up in the run-in to the very top races and the last month will ensure that a lot will be going on behind the boyish exterior this afternoon. It's in such situations that Kinane's presence becomes even more important.

No jockey in the world brings a colder or harder focus to the job of getting a horse home in front when it really counts.

Kinane freely admits he gets nervous too but the records say that when the stakes are highest, the lower his pulse rate seems to get. What Keane wouldn't give to be able to do the same.

Mind you, having the belief that he is on one of the best horses he has ever ridden can only help and Kinane has that in spades.

After Hawk Wing won the Eclipse, he described the giant, charismatic colt as "exceptional." Time hasn't dimmed the opinion.

"There is an enormous talent there," he says simply. "He was just beaten in the Guineas and then beaten by a very good horse in the Derby when the conditions were not ideal.

"I picked Hawk Wing rather than High Chaparral because I understood the forecast for that weekend was for good ground. I was very disappointed when I rode in the Oaks the day before. Yes, it was frustrating but it was too late by then."

The significance of Kinane's verdict on Hawk Wing can be judged by one look at the roll of honour for the Champion Stakes.

Kinane is the most successful jockey in the race's history, winning it four times with horses of the calibre of Giant's Causeway and Pilsudski. If Hawk Wing is as good as them, then Grandera and the rest are in for a fruitless struggle.

But that is still an if. The colt picked up his Group One, three-year-old pot in the Eclipse but a defeat of his pacemaker Sholokhov didn't convince everyone. The third and fourth that day appear Group Three class and no more.

Kinane believes Hawk Wing won that Eclipse despite the type of tacky ground he hates. If in the full of his health today, there will be no such excuses in a race which in recent years has only been won by the best around.

"It must be one of the top 10 races in the world now. The last few years have been fascinating. It is always very important because the timing is perfect. The Arc is coming up and so is the Breeders' Cup," Kinane says.

That's the future, however, and it won't count for much if the Ballydoyle stars that lit up the first half of the season don't return in all their pomp.

Between Leopardstown and Longchamp, there's a lot riding on this weekend.

Just as Michael Kinane likes it best.