Plenty off-track falls for Fallon

AS Kieren Fallon was being grilled yesterday by City of London detectives experienced in fraud investigation, his friends in Clare were painting a different picture of the volatile but supremely skilled horseman.

It was some weeks ago and the 39-year-old Clare man had been asked to take part in a fund raiser for a young jockey whose career was cut short by injury.

Fallon’s last ride was in the 5.10 at Lingfield. He arrived in Limerick at 8.40pm. The night was a roaring success and raised €100,000 for the jockey, said Pat Jones, Fallon’s fellow Clare man, friend, confidante and, at times, bodyguard.

“And Kieren didn’t even know the young man,” said Mr Jones, who talks tough in the face of what he believes is, and has been, a witch hunt by both the Jockey Club and the English media against his friend.

Not surprisingly, Jones thinks the accusations now being made are complete rubbish. At the very least, Fallon is innocent until proven guilty, he says.

But Fallon, six-times British champion flat jockey, three-time Derby winner and with 141 winners this year, just can’t seem to avoid controversy in a career that has spanned two decades.

He has faced bans for attacking fellow jockeys and verbally abusing course staff, including ambulance personnel.

He lost his job as stable jockey to Henry Cecil after accusations of an affair with the trainer’s wife, which he denied. He is said to have cut short his time in Hong Kong after inadvertently become embroiled with local gangsters.

And most recently, in March, he was banned for 21 days for allegedly easing up on his horse in a race at Lingfield. He is still awaiting a Jockey Club hearing over race-fixing allegations made in a Sunday newspaper.

Fallon, a married father of three who lives with his ex-jockey wife Julie Bowker in Newmarket, was an unlikely jockey and an unlikelier champion. He grew up on a smallholding in the townland of Ballinruan in Co Clare, close to the village of Crusheen.

His father combined working on the farm with a sideline as a plasterer. Fallon spent time around horses in his early days but they certainly weren’t thoroughbreds.

At just 5’3”, Fallon once joked that be became a jockey because he was too small to do anything else. More seriously, his friends describe him as extremely tough and a person who could do anything if he put his mind to it.

Having left school at 14, he took up horse racing at the relatively late age of 17. As such, he had to graft 50% harder than anybody else, says Pat Jones.

Fallon joined Kevin Prendergast’s Curragh yard in 1982 to learn how to ride and less than two years later won his first race, on Piccadilly Lord at Navan.

In the next three years, he brought home 38 winners in Ireland before moving to England. His progress was steady thereafter and he was a regular on the north of England circuit, increasing his number of winners each year until he rode his first century in 1996.

His progress continued despite the six-month ban in 1994 handed down after the Jockey Club found him guilty of violent or improper conduct by pulling fellow jockey Stuart Webster from a horse at the end of a race at Beverley in Yorkshire.

Henry Cecil saw his potential and despite some resistance from the trainer’s own team, he brought the then 31-year-old south, to become his Newmarket stable jockey.

With Cecil’s powerful stable behind him, Fallon became champion jockey for the first time in 1997, riding more than 200 winners that year.

The duo teamed up to win the 1999 Epsom Derby on Oath but split soon afterwards when Cecil’s wife admitted having sex with a leading jockey.

Fallon denied any involvement and took an unfair dismissal case which was settled out of court.

During his period with Cecil, he had a highly successful three month stint in Hong Kong. And in 1997, Fallon had been awarded the equivalent of over €100,000 in libel damages after successfully suing a newspaper that alleged he did not try on a named horse.

Despite the turbulence off-track, Fallon has been champion flat jockey every year since 1997, bar 2000 when he was out injured for six months. He fell at Ascot and severed nerves, leading to fears that his career might be over.

But it has since got even better.

The three time Derby winner - including the last two, a fabulous win on Kris Kin in 2003 and then North Light this year - had his best ever year in 2003, running home 221 winners.

This was despite spending 30 days in a clinic having treatment for an alcohol problem early that year.

On one British horse racing site, Fallon is asked whether he has any bad habits. None in particular, he says, since he gave up alcohol.

Many who love horse racing, and home grown heroes, will be hoping that is true.