Coetzee, however, is in racing's hot seat and he knows it. He's not only the regular rider of unbeaten champion Silent Witness, he's the only jockey every to grace that famous broad back on race day.

But with every privilege, they say, comes an equal or greater responsibility. And in the case of Silent Witness, the counter-balancing burden is the weight of expectation that piloting the great one undoubtedly brings.

'It's important to be winning the mind game and not let yourself feel the pressure of a situation like this,' Coetzee said. 'The way I do it is my looking at the race from every possibility, to make sure I have all my bases covered.

'I know what I'll do if the pace is fast, I know what I'll do if it's slow, I have to figure out how I'd respond if something unusual happens, the sort of things we've all seen in races from time to time. When I think I have every possible situation covered, then I can allow myself to relax and not worry about it.'

And whenever Coetzee might begin to feel a bit tense about the big day, or momentarily think of 'what if' situations that involve the unimaginable defeat, there's always one consolation: 'If you look at it another way, there's relatively no pressure on me. I'm on Silent Witness. It's the other guys who are under pressure, trying to work out how the hell they can beat us,' he chuckled.

The Silent Witness story is unique in many ways, not least because of the close bonds formed between the champion's trainer and jockey.

In a profession where trainer-jockey relationships are more fragile than cheap crystal, the Cruz-Coetzee pairing is enduring. They call them the C-team.

They have incredible levels of mutual respect. Cruz, six times champion jockey of Hong Kong during his glory days in the saddle, was so good himself that he's naturally a hard marker. But in Coetzee, he has a rider who is not only a tactically brilliant jockey, but a peerless judge of pace, not to mention a master horseman.

That term, horseman, is what separates the good jockeys from great ones. The horseman is part jockey, part whisperer. He communicates with his horse in the most subtle ways, that we grounded mortals don't even notice, and the horse understands.

A movement of the toes, a click of the tongue, a feather-light touch of rein on the side of the neck, or a minute shift in weight distribution in the saddle - all these are signals to the horse which will gain a response.

Coetzee says Cruz demands perfection. For a jockey, for anyone, perfection is an impossible thing to provide. But an unbeaten 16-win scoreline with Silent Witness says Coetzee has gone as close as humanly possible.

Coetzee came to Hong Kong in 1992, at the age of 33, after a stellar career in South Africa. He'd been apprenticed to his father, respected trainer Hennie Coetzee, at Durban, but the old master died in the fourth year of the son's indentures and Felix was transferred to champion trainer Terence Millard - father of Hong Kong trainer Tony Millard - in Cape Town.

'When I started there, Tony was still at school,' Coetzee recalled. 'Eventually, he joined his father's stable, then became his assistant [trainer] and eventually took over the stable. I rode for the Millards for 13 years. Tony's father was a legend in South Africa racing, a very dominant trainer who would often have the first, second and third placegetters in a big race. I was very lucky - riding for them, I won the premiership three times and won every big race there is in South Africa.'

The world suddenly became a bit smaller one day in 1992 when Robin Parke, then racing editor of the South China Morning Post, telephoned and asked whether Coetzee was interested in coming to Hong Kong, to become the retained rider for Brian Kan Ping-chee.

The answer, obviously, was yes. And with the exception of a full year on the sidelines with a broken leg that required three operations during 1994-95, Coetzee has rarely looked back.

While Silent Witness seeks to extend his dominance to 1,400 metres in the Queen's Silver Jubilee Cup, Coetzee also has a live chance with Russian Pearl in the day's richest event, the $14 million Audemars Piguet Queen Elizabeth II Cup.

The QEII is one of the few gaps in Coetzee's Hong Kong CV, having finished third on Indigenous in 2002 and fourth on Electronic Unicorn in 2001. Last year, he finished sixth on favourite Lucky Owners, though the Danehill stallion sustained a mild injury and never raced again.

But that's history. Coetzee is a great one for living his life in the present and, with a horse like Silent Witness in your life, there's definitely no time like the present.