Dubai: Godolphin pilots Silvestre de Sousa and Mickael Barzalona have learned the hard way that you can’t take anything for granted.

There was a time when the stable’s top rides were split between the two Dubai World Cup-winning riders. However, as that is not the case anymore, Silvestre and Mickael now have to compete with the likes of Kieren Fallon, Ryan Moore, William Buick, Richard Hughes and other leading riders, for assignments that would normally have been theirs for the taking.

Alas, everything has changed overnight, with both the Godolphin handlers, Saeed Bin Surour and Charlie Appleby opting for change, or as Appleby divulged, “we’ve opened the pool up a little bit bigger”.

Very intriguing.

However, could Bin Surour and Appleby have lost confidence in their respective riders? Or is there really a need to become multi-dimensional as Appleby suggested in a recent interview.

To find the answer, perhaps one needs to look at the bigger picture. Both Bin Surour and Appleby’s stables are stacked with talent. A variety of talent. Perhaps it makes sense to also use the talent available in the riding ranks to bring out the best in your horses.

Here again, I would like to recall a recent comment by Appleby.

“Mickael is a very sympathetic rider, who likes to come from off the pace. But that does not suit every horse. You have to match the jockey with the horse, and that is what we will be doing,” he said.

As a result, riders like Fallon, who boasts both variation and innovation, has come to pick up some of the best Godolphin rides on offer.

Bin Surour said that he has implicit faith in the former six-time British champion, describing him as having a flawless eye for strengths and weaknesses in a horse once he has ridden him.

Fallon rode out a lot at Godolphin’s Al Quoz base during the winter and his hand could be seen in many of the big wins Bin Surour pulled off. Perhaps even on the Dubai World Cup hero African Story, whose form could have been assessed alongside stable companion Prince Bishop, who beat him in two legs of the Al Maktoum Challenge.

The alliance between Bin Surour and Fallon can only get better. Both have the requisite experience in horse racing to forge a winning partnership, the kind Bin Surour enjoyed with Frankie Dettori before his departure at the end of 2012.

In De Sousa, Bin Surour has a bona fide ally, but perhaps there is something missing. I haven’t seen the kind of spark that you would normally see in a crack pairing, like we did with The Woodies — the great Australian doubles team of Todd Woodbridge and Mark Woodforde, one of the most successful pairings in tennis history or Mike Tyson and Cus D’Amato and Ross Brawn and Michael Schumacher.

It must be a bitter pill to swallow when you fall out of favour with your partner just when you think you have earned his allegiance. Could this have been the case with De Sousa despite him having ridden Bin Surour’s African Story to victory in the Dubai World Cup at Meydan in March?

The good thing is the talk that both De Sousa and Barzalona are coping well after being devalued and I’m sure this will make them stronger, and much better riders. Some of the greatest cricketers and football players have experienced similar reverses but have endured and come back with greater resolve.