Kieren Fallon
Kieren Fallon’s anticipated fairytale on the aptly named True Story may not have enjoyed the desired ending in the Australia dominated Investec Derby on Saturday. But the 49yo remains one of the great characters of the modern era.
Kieren Fallon has said in the past that he does not know exactly why he rides Epsom racecourse so well but it is tempting to suggest that the answer is obvious. Every jockey finds trouble here, the most devious and difficult venue for any major race. The successful riders at Epsom are the ones who can face any problem, keep their chance alive and emerge with their horse still running. No jockey in living memory has had more practice at that, both on and off the track, than Kieren Francis Fallon.
No jockey has steered a path to victory from the treacherous stall one on the inside of the track since Fallon himself did so 15 years ago on Oath, the first of his three Derby winners to date.
In the early days of his career Fallon hauled a fellow jockey from his horse after a minor race at Beverley and was banned from riding for six months as a result. He served another six-month ban for failing a drugs test in 2006, then stood trial on race-fixing charges at the Old Bailey in 2007. No sooner had the case against him collapsed than it emerged that Fallon faced an 18-month ban for another failed drugs test. He did not ride again until the autumn of 2008.
Laced between the calamities, as if on a loom, are the threads of brilliance. He has been the champion jockey six times, won 16 British Classics and held three of the biggest jobs in the game as stable jockey to the late Sir Henry Cecil, Sir Michael Stoute and then Aidan O’Brien. He won the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe 24 hours before he was due in the dock at the Old Bailey. At Epsom he has ridden seven Classic winners in 23 attempts, an exceptional strike-rate at this of all tracks.
Yet he was in another trough barely six months ago, in its way the deepest and most difficult to escape. A total of 154 winners in 2011 had dwindled to 87 and then 62 in the space of two seasons. His old jobs with O’Brien and Stoute were filled by a 19-year-old and a 30-year-old respectively. As he turned 49 in February, as old as Joseph O’Brien and Ryan Moore put together, it seemed that his time had finally passed.
Fallon suggested last week that, when he went to ride a horse called Prince Bishop for the Godolphin trainer Saeed bin Suroor, he thought it could be his last mount in public. If the horse was beaten – or more likely when, since it was a 14-1 outsider – he would call it a day. But Prince Bishop won and four months later Fallon is back in the big time as the effective No1 rider to Suroor, whose string is one of the most powerful in the business. “That’s what he thinks [that he would have retired] but I would have stopped him giving up,” Suroor said at Epsom on Friday. “I’ve known Kieren for 20 years and he’s one of the best jockeys in the world. If you give him the right horse, he will win with it.
“I wanted to support him and I want to bring him back to the top by supporting him with the best horses in my stable. He’s very keen and very fit. I know he’s 49 but he looks like he’s in his 20s. So far he’s done really well for us and I’ve told him I will support him until his last day as a rider.”
Half a dozen years ago, when Frankie Dettori was Godolphin’s No1 jockey and Fallon was still serving the second of his long drug suspensions, it would have been difficult to imagine the Irish rider ever appearing in the famous royal blue silks. A month after Prince Bishop’s victory, meanwhile, Silvestre de Sousa won the Dubai World Cup, the world’s richest race, on Suroor’s African Story, and his status as the trainer’s principal rider seemed secure. Fallon has seized his latest chance to revive his career so firmly, however, that by early May, he had effectively replaced De Sousa as the yard’s No1.
Fallon did all he could on Ihtimal, his first Classic ride of the meeting, in Friday’s Oaks but it took him a furlong to get her to switch off and settle. Typically he got her into position to deliver a charge down the middle of the track in the home straight but Ihtimal’s stamina – already under suspicion due to the number of milers in her pedigree – eventually ran out inside the final quarter-mile and she could finish only fifth. “Kieren has won seven Classics at Epsom and many other races here too,” Suroor said. “He knows it better than any other jockey.”
