Oh, how we love a prodigal who makes it. And oh how quickly we will dismiss those who remain on the wastrel path. A year ago this week, Kieren Fallon, the six times Champion jockey and winner of 15 Classics, started riding again in Britain for the first time since 2006. After the long absence from British racecourses, occasioned by two positive drug tests and earlier race-fixing charges which were dismissed in court, the Jeremiahs had a field day. Typical was the prediction: ‘By the time his suspension expires in the summer of 2009 he will be yesterday’s man’ and the headline: ‘Fallon: no way back for the finest talent of his generation.’
Some would rather he had stayed in obscurity. Others of us wanted to see him back in the saddle partly because we felt that Fallon, blessed with such prodigious talent, owed the racing community, although I guess we all felt nervous that he might still attract headlines for the wrong reasons. He has been in more scrapes than a potato peeler and he himself admits that he has a knack for walking into a room of 50 people and within ten minutes finding himself talking to the dodgiest character present.
Ironically, the jockey who is famous for making up horses’ minds for them has been plagued all his life by the self-doubts of those given no educational opportunities. While he insisted he would be coming back happier and fitter, Fallon himself wondered, ‘Will I still be able to see the board, like a good chess player?’ It has taken a little longer than expected to answer that question. Kieren is not yet vying again for the jockey’s championship, having to settle currently for fifth place, with some top owners and trainers still reluctant to use him. But there is no question that at 45 he is ‘seeing the board’ still with microscopic clarity.
I went to Goodwood on Saturday simply to check out the Fallon skills. The night before at Newmarket he had ridden a treble. Riding over one of the trickiest tracks in the country he then repeated the feat, and all three victories required the assistance of the camera to determine who had won.
For sheer nerve and strength in the finish Fallon’s rides could not have been bettered. On Luca Cumani’s six-year-old Axiom in the first he did not get a clear run when coming to challenge. But once he got the gap you could see the pure horseman’s drive, the strength through the legs, which got his mount up literally in the last stride. It was almost exactly the same story in the second, this time aboard Cumani’s Drunken Sailor, who collared the George Baker-ridden Bergo literally on the line for a second short-head victory. Not beautiful, but effective. The third Fallon victory, on Alice Alleyne for Sir Michael Stoute, demonstrated his versatility. This time he was not riding a hold-up horse but struck the front two furlongs out and showed all his strength in holding off Eddie Ahern on the favourite Gouray Girl by another short head. It will, I suspect, have given Fallon particular pleasure that in the absence through injury of champion jockey Ryan Moore he has been picking up rides again from Sir Michael, one of the top figures who stuck by him when times were bad, giving him work-riding opportunities.
Fallon is back and, more importantly, the only time he has hit the non-sports-page headlines this season was as the innocent party when an owner, mistakenly believing that Fallon’s mount had impeded his horse, walked up and hit him. The prodigal is back, and is still happy to have people reminded that Lester Piggott won his last championship at 46 and Mick Kinane was 50 when he rode Sea The Stars to his Classic victories.
We must, though, keep looking to the future, too, and there was something of the Fallon fearlessness about the way in which young Jack Mitchell, 22, went for a narrow gap on the rails riding Cochambamba in the Group Three Prestige Stakes. They finished second to Brian Meehan’s Theyskens Theory, whom I have already backed for next season’s 1,000 Guineas, but both fillies should repay following. So should young Jack, who went one better in the next on the Dalakhani filly Devoted. He held her up early on and made smooth progress in the straight. With rides coming from Peter Chapple-Hyam, Michael Jarvis and, lately, Richard Fahey and Luca Cumani as well as Devoted’s trainer Ralph Beckett, Jack Mitchell seems to be flowering at just the right point in his career.
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