With only nine meetings left in the current season, engravers can already start chiselling the name Hakim Kamaruddin into the Singapore champion apprentice jockey trophy.

And since they're at it, it wouldn't be a bad idea to save the template for the senior jockey trophy as well.

The second-year Malaysian rider is daylight ahead in the apprentice jockey's premiership on 51 winners, and even if mathematically, second-placed Iskandar Rosman can bridge that Grand Canyon gap of 34 winners, we all know it's not going to happen.

Unless you still believe in Santa Claus, which would mean Iskandar needs to ride on average four winners a meeting to turn the tables, while Hakim suddenly forgets where the winning post is. In other words, you have a better chance of seeing a big man in red and white come tumbling down your chimney in three months' time.

So overwhelming is Hakim's dominance this year that he also bullies the big boys, no kidding! The 12-winner lead on Danny Beasley is not as unassailable, more so with Hakim on the sidelines for two meetings, but the odds of going the early crow are still in cricket score territory.

Not since Benny Woodworth in the Bukit Timah days in 1995 has Singapore racing seen a rookie "killing two birds with one stone" in both championships. While there was no real clarity whether the same applies today, it's understood that if Hakim has the most number of winners in both categories by the conclusion of the last meeting, he takes both crowns.

Claiming the apprentice title at only his second season was already unfathomable to a kid who barely 14 years ago started riding ponies bareback in his native Kelantan, but cocking a snook to the Vlad Duric, Danny Beasley and Marc Lerner on their much tougher playground without so much as an "excuse me, is it okay to take yours, too?", the mind boggles.

Not Hakim's, it appears. While the 23-year-old does seem to have a fairly good grasp of the whirlwind year he is having, the enormity of the achievement (in the making if you prefer), regardless of that invaluable ally called a claim (currently down to two kilos, but with his tally of 72 winners, it will drop to one kilo with another seven winners), doesn't seem to have sunk in.

Like any teenage jockey wannabe, he harboured dreams of becoming "joki numbor satu" (No 1 jockey in Malay) one day, but all he cared about from the day he moved South from Frank Maynard's Kuala Lumpur yard to join Mark Walker's in 2019 was "learn and ride winners".

From Day 1, Walker saw he had a raw diamond under his care. Hakim had all the right attributes, good hands, great balance, a racing mind, and that X factor that separates the wheat from the chaff – horses run for him.

After a warm-up rookie year in 2020 when he finished second to Simon Kok Wei Hoong, he has literally exploded onto the scene this year, riding winners by the spades.

Some kids get swell-headed when they enter what can be seen as rock star zone and often become a victim of their own success, but for Hakim, it feels like a Forrest Gump moment. He just keeps running, stops to look at the scoreboard, "oh, I'm leading", puts his head down, bum up and carries on.

"I think I should be champion apprentice. I've got big lead now," said Hakim whose command of English has improved significantly compared to his early days.

"But I don't think about that. I just want to try my best on every horse, and I really thank my master for supporting me with good horses.

"And other trainers like Michael Clements, Tim Fitzsimmons and Desmond Koh. It's because I get so many rides and so many good horses that I can improve my riding.

"(For the senior jockey title) I also want to try. Beasley is a very good jockey, a very experienced jockey, and he can still win."

The Australian jockey, who is in himself a remarkable comeback story after coming out of a three-year retirement, certainly has the wherewithal to do that – especially if Hakim is suspended, just like he is currently on the outer for careless riding aboard Free Fallin' last Saturday.

"I don't want to get suspended, it's important that I ride every week (for me to win the senior title as well). Unfortunately I'm suspended for two weeks, it's okay, but any more (suspensions), then no good," he said switching to a more serious tone.

If one Achilles' heel has to be found in Hakim, it might be his disciplinary record that is not too flash in two years of riding with 11 suspensions, mostly for the same indiscretion, careless riding.

Hakim - who has yet to win a feature race, but with his Midas touch, one feels it won't be too long before he does - will miss this Saturday's and next weekend's meetings before returning to action at the Group 1 Queen Elizabeth II Cup meeting on October 16.

While he holds a healthy buffer, he is still hoping Beasley won't close the gap, and he doesn't incur the wrath of the Stewards anymore – or heaven forbid, suffer any injury - till the end of the season.

Most well-established jockeys go for holiday (or staycation with the closed borders these days) when they are rubbed out, but for Hakim, who has been living at Walker's stables since the lockdown, there's no such thing as downtime.

"When I'm suspended, I help saddle horses at the parade ring. I live at the stables, anyway," said Hakim, who used to live across the border in Johor Bahru before the Causeway was closed and made any commuting impossible.

"I'll just keep myself busy riding trackwork, around 10 horses every morning. Two to three times a week after trackwork, I jump on the mechanical horse for 35 minutes.

"When I just came to Singapore (ex-Kranji jockey) Mohd Firdaus used to teach me about riding. Now (ex-multiple-Singapore champion jockey) Saimee (Jumaat) gives me a lot of advice, he's very good."

While Hakim was too young to know about Saimee's reign in the early 90s into the early 2010s, he has a more contemporary role model to look up to.

"Joao Moreira is the best, I like the way he rides. I try and ride like him, but it's not 100%," said Hakim of the former four-time Singapore champion jockey and current Hong Kong kingpin.

Truth be told, coming even within 50% of the Brazilian wizard can't be half bad, but Hakim humbly said he still had a fair way to go.

It may sound rich from someone who has taken Kranji by storm in 2021 at only his second season - he was a complete newbie as he only rode trackwork in Malaysia – while some jockeys can wait an eternity before they win a champion title, let alone two in the same year, but taking his laid-back background into context, chances are he means every word.

Hakim hails from a non-racing family where the good old kampung spirit of Kelantan is part of everyday life, except those kids there don't go fishing or kicking a ball in a field – and certainly don't play Xbox - they go giddy-up on those kuda padis (wild ponies) that roam at every corner.

Unlike Singaporean jockeys who picked up riding late, either through a newspaper ad from the Singapore Training Academy for Racing (STAR) programme or by word of mouth through some uncle who's a syce at Kranji, the Kelantan boys like Shafiq Rizuan, A'Isisuhairi Kasim, Mohd Zaki or Zawari Razali, to name a few, take to horseback riding like a duck to water.

"I started riding when I was nine years old. A friend of mine, who's now a senior track rider in Penang, had a horse and I would go and ride that horse after school – bareback and barefoot," said Hakim, who is also known as Aiman by his peers.

"I was only 33 kilos then, and someone told me I could become a jockey. It's my friend Aizat, who is a jockey, who got me the job with Mr Maynard in KL.

"I was sad to leave my family, but they were okay with me becoming a jockey. Today, my mum and dad are very proud of me, especially if I become champion apprentice jockey this year.

"They can't watch 'live' racing on TV from Kelantan, but they watch the replays on YouTube. I also have two younger sisters and they are also proud of me.

"I hope one day my whole family can come here at Kranji to watch me ride, when racing is open to public again."