RACING RETURN OF KIEREN FALLON: HIS FACE was clenched, grey, suspicious. This was a sportsman retreating into a private world in a public place. All the turmoil that has punctuated Kieren Fallon's life in the saddle was sculpted around his eyes as he pressed through a swarm of photographers and a smattering of punters who clapped him back to the parade ring.
Horse racing’s dark star was about to be upstaged by a brighter symbol of what the sport would like to be. Hayley Turner (26), the best woman jockey these isles have seen, has her own comeback tale. In March, she fell so heavily on the Newmarket gallops that blood ran from her ears and bruising was found on her brain. A 12-month medical suspension was lifted in July and Turner reclaimed the life she loves. Yesterday at Lingfield Park she showed Fallon the right path back to happiness, beating his first mount in Britain for three years into second place by two and a quarter lengths.
By then Fallon had rediscovered his smile. He was no longer the haunted outcast. An 18-month worldwide ban for testing positive for cocaine had elapsed and a quiet Surrey track was ready to welcome him back without the fuss his return had generated all week.
Lingfield, though, is a place of ghosts for the six-times champion jockey. It was here that he picked up a 21-day ban for losing a race he seemed bound to win, on Ballinger Ridge: a case that featured in the great Old Bailey race-fixing trial, which collapsed in December 2007.
The returning punters’ pal finished second (Rare Malt), fourth (Roodee King), fifth (Diriculous) and second-last (Satwa Gold) before dashing off to Kempton Park for three (also losing) evening rides. Rare Malt, the 13 to 8 joint favourite, was meant to ease him back to the winner’s enclosure but Turner ruined the script on a 20 to 1 shot called Mr Mahoganeigh. Her rousing ascent in a male-dominated sport is the best of many changes since Fallon last dominated the weighing room with his punchy riding style and brooding presence.
“There are a few new faces I would not have ridden against before. The boys are close in there but when they get on the track they are all individuals,” he said after climbing down from Rare Malt, whose trainer, Amy Weaver, is Turner’s housemate in Newmarket.
“I hope she doesn’t drive off to Kempton without me,” Turner laughed. “She [Weaver] was joking – it’s all me, me, me, Hayley. It would have been nice for Kieren to have a winner straight away but I’m sure he is just glad to be back here today. That’s how I felt when I came back. I finished second [at Ascot] and I was just happy to be back riding.”
It is a measure of racing’s desperation to retain its place in our sporting culture that Fallon has been welcomed back, by many Flat racing professionals, as the one household name capable of catching the outside world’s attention.
AP McCoy serves this purpose effortlessly over jumps but the Flat has lacked an idol since the days of Lester Piggott, Willie Carson and Pat Eddery, though Frankie Dettori, the Italian Carson, is not short of effervescence.
The Turf is engaged in prolonged introspection about how to promote itself to the non-aficionado. In this sense Fallon is a hard sell.
He was banned for six months for pulling a fellow jockey (Stuart Webster) off a horse at Beverley in 1994, has twice tested positive for banned substances and was one of 16 arrested in September 2004 in a botched investigation into alleged race fixing. He has also confessed to being “reckless” in his willingness to impart inside information.
But Fallon, racecourse sages all assert, is the pilot 98 per cent of gamblers would want on their animal if their life depended on it winning. For most of the 1,425 at Lingfield on a low-key Friday, a day at the races is a financial enterprise, and Fallon is the ally most likely to help them win the war against the bookmaker.
Ethically, it is no more complicated than that down in the betting ring, which is why a small knot of punters clenched fists and shouted “Come on, Kieren” as he shouldered his way to the parade ring for the leg-up on Rare Malt.
Friends from Yorkshire and Ireland lent support after he had been stuck on the M25 (“I didn’t think I’d get here”) and John McCririck had chastised him on air for entering the weighing room via a side route.
A PR offensive produced many interviews and sympathetic coverage but the reality of comeback day brought a different tide of emotion. The crowd’s warmth, he said, “helps to build your confidence back up again”.
Of race riding, he announced: “It’s the only thing I know and the only thing I want to do. My aim is to ride as many winners as I can and have a crack at the championship next year. I hope I can feel as good as I do at home on the track.”
The redemption script requires us to believe that lessons have all been learned, and temptation conquered, forever.
The first day back is blessed with a purity that later, less uplifting afternoons and nights may not have. It was an innocent remark on the steps of the weighing room that left the deepest impression. “My last ride is at Kempton at ten to nine,” he said. “I hope I can survive that long.”
Guardian Service
