But the battling brigade always manage to pick up some crumbs.

And they don't come more battling than the trainer-jockey duo of Mick Bell and veteran rider Kevin Forrester, who grabbed the limelight as the spring spotlight began to dim at the weekend when their great old warrior Jungle Edge beat younger rivals to score in a group three race at Sandown.

Forrester, aged 56, doesn't get many rides these days but when the chance comes he displays the vigour,drive and determination of a jockey half his age.

Bell, who began training in the 1980s but gave the game away for a long time before resuming nearly three years ago, is a career farrier, running a major blacksmith and farriery business at Cranbourne.

He has only half a dozen horses in work, most of them extremely moderate - save for one, stable star Jungle Edge.

And it's the seven-year-old gelding who has given Bell some of his biggest training highlights in the past couple of years, as well as providing an important psychological support in the months since he lost his wife of 33 years, Bev, to cancer earlier this year.

Words pour from the emotional Bell in a torrent of joy after he claims a win, faster than his fingers can pick the notes on the guitar that he also plays for relaxation.

His delight was clearly evident after Jungle Edge made all the running under Forrester in the Kevin Heffernan Stakes on Saturday.

The son of Dubawi - one of Godolphin's leading European stallions - had never quite displayed the promise of that pedigree before he came to Bell's stable.

The gelding had been running around at tracks like Goulburn, the Sapphire Coast and Moruya for previous trainers, so the improvement Bell has wrought from him in a couple of seasons has been amazing given his rating is now up to 105 and he is a solid group race performer.

"He's a very special horse for me. with all I have had happen in the last year, losing my wife..the last time we had a runner in a race here she was here.

"He's a brilliant horse, he's the horse you dream of..he tries so hard, he doesn't know how to lose," says Bell.

Much of that improvement has come from the involvement with Forrester, a jockey whose theme tune could be the that old ditty 'I've Been Everywhere Man".

The rider served his apprenticeship in his native Ballarat as a teenager, but since then has ridden all over Australia and in South East Asia trying to make a living.

It's not that he wasn't a well regarded performer when he was younger - he won an Australian Cup on Admiral Lincoln in 1984 - but like so many things in racing, fashion plays a part and fresher faces and younger men tend to get opportunities that older riders don't as their star is perceived to wane.

"I have been in the Gold Coast, Perth, Malaysia, I won the KL Gold Cup over there. I am chasing money, horses and women. I try to keep it in that order," Forrester joked after dismounting on Saturday.

But, he made clear, he is deadly serious about doing a job he loves.

"Horses are part of my life, I can't believe I get paid. I know it rains and you get cold and that, but once you pair up with a horse it's like your buddy.

"If you click with a horse, and spend enough time with them they will come to you, like a puppy. You just have to talk to them.

"If you do a bit of groundwork at the track, especially on a horse that is not easy to get along with, you can win that horse over. When it comes to the point where it puts its head down and wants to put the bridle on, and goes on to win a race, that's a big achievement.

Forrester knows that older riders struggle to get opportunities but believes that there is a cohort of senior men who are now bucking the trend, himself included.

"Danny Miller in Perth, who is 70, is still riding winners. Robert Thompson in Brisbane ... he's older than me. Jeff Lloyd, the South African, is my age or older and setting records in Queensland.

"I rode on Golden Slipper day in Sydney, and Thompson and Lloyd were there too. We feed off each other by giving each other a pat on the back."