Horse racing, suffering something of an image crisis, desperately needs stars. Kieren Fallon is one of the highest order. But if cats are said to have nine lives then Fallon has 10 and he knows that if he falls from grace again there is no coming back.
Fallon, 44, trumpeted his rise from the ashes when riding Monday's treble at Folkestone for Luca Cumani. The jockey's career has been like a game of snakes and ladders and he is no stranger to the rapid slither back to the bottom - as he himself acknowledges, this is his last shot. "It was a good day. I've been gone for such a long time that I was always going to be a bit ring rusty, but I've got a good book of rides and I feel I've cracked it," he said.
There was a time when the six-time champion jockey, riding for Sir Michael Stoute and watching Johnny Murtagh bang home winners for his old boss Aidan O'Brien, wondered if he could cut it. "I was very nervous," he said of that first canter to the start at Lingfield last Friday. "I was racing again having been out for such a long time and I didn't know whether I still had it or not." A day later his fears were eased when he rode the first winner of his comeback at Wolverhampton and they were banished when something slotted into place on Monday.
"It was like I was starting from scratch but it didn't take me long," he said. "I've found the key to it all again, something's clicked with me and I'm back." During his heyday, no one, except perhaps arch-rival Frankie Dettori at his most charming, could come close to Fallon in terms of broad appeal. During the dark days of his drug and alcohol problems, unable to handle fame and riches, he followed a murky path that cumulated in him being charged with corruption in 2006. That case, heard at the Old Bailey in London in 2007, was thrown out before the judge heard the defence. Instead of basking in vindication, Fallon could not pull himself out of the quagmire.
His jockey's licence had been suspended in the UK following his arrest in 2004 and, although he was free to ride in Ireland and France, his career was in tatters. Few falls from grace have been quite so spectacular. Fallon gave the Aidan O'Brien-trained Dylan Thomas the ride of his life to land the Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe for the second time and shortly after it was game over when he was slapped with a drugs ban. His second, subsequent failed drugs test earned him an 18-month suspension.
That Fallon is accepted, even by his most vehement detractors, to be one of the greatest is not in doubt. The question is whether, during his enforced absence from the saddle, he has triumphed over the side of his character susceptible to temptation. He certainly gives every sign that this time, finally, he can ride the wave of success that in the past has pulled him under. At 44, he is older, wiser and still has more than a decade of race riding before him. The ultimate comeback king Lester Piggott, the 11-time champion, spent a year in prison for tax evasion before his shock return, steering Vincent O'Brien's Royal Academy to scintillating victory in the Breeders Cup Mile in 1990 just shy of his 55th birthday
The British Horseracing Authority, keen to reinstate another of the great champions in the sport, issued Fallon with a list of compliance regimes before giving the seal of approval to what must surely be his final chance to keep on the straight and narrow. From now on Fallon is only looking ahead. In the short term that means another shot at the Arc, this time not on one of O'Brien's runners but on the horse he beat by a head in the last race he won before his ban, Youmzain.
"We finished third in Germany in the Preis von Baden on Sunday, but the year he came second in the Arc he finished fourth, so that's no indication," he said of the Mick Channon-trained horse. "It was a bit of a strange race, the ground wasn't very nice and was a bit loose on top and he just couldn't get a hold of it. But he'll be right for the Arc." If Fallon can guide Youmzain, who has missed out on a string of Group One successes, to Arc victory, there can be no doubt that Fallon is back. Whether he has learned to handle life at the top remains to be seen.
stregoning@thenational.ae
