Punter's champion on top in a contest that still divides opinion

It was a season that did little or nothing to end the debate over the continued significance of the revamped Flat jockeys' championship or the worth of the rider who finishes as champion. All we could say for certain was that during the spell now allotted to the title – from May 6 to October 21, and not including all the bits that have been banished to the icy wilderness of an all-weather winter or the leaf-blown autumn landscape that follows Qipco Champions Day – Silvestre de Sousa won more races than anybody else, by some considerable margin.

A comprehensive 44 was the diminutive Brazilian's margin of victory over defending champion Jim Crowley, and none could doubt his numerical superiority, his unfailing work ethic or his will to win. The room for conjecture existed behind the headline figures.

On the one hand, it wasn't hard to argue that it was an anomaly that a man could become champion jockey without riding a single Group 1 winner. There had been a Group 2 – on Desert Skyline in the Doncaster Cup – a pair of Group 3s that fell out of bounds in title terms, and a few Listed races, but none at the top level, and that rankled in some minds.