Tales from the Turf

by Robin Oakley

  It would not have been the same in politics. When the rumours start to circulate, the lunch dates there dry up rapidly. Those due to appear on platforms with you suddenly discover important appointments elsewhere. Former friends pass by on the other side of the street. But when I spoke to Dean an hour before his Sandown triumph it was a different tale he had to tell. Racing actually does live up to the belief that a man is innocent until proven guilty.

  Not one of the trainers he had ridden for before his arrest has failed to continue supporting him. ‘Had I not had that kind of support I don’t know that I would have been able to handle it.’ Day in, day out it has been difficult, he admits. At first he lived with the fear of being abused as he rode a mount around the paddock. But never once has he had a bad response.

  ‘When I rode my first winner after all this happened I was heading back into the paddock wondering what kind of reception I would get – boos or jeers or what. Instead it was like coming in after winning a race at the Cheltenham Festival – enormous cheers and congratulations and calls of “Keep it up” and “We’re behind you”. It sent shivers down my back. It makes you feel good and want to keep battling on.’

  The choice was simple, said Dean. ‘You can either go down or try to keep going and I have always had a never-say-die attitude. Nobody has ever given me anything for nothing. I’ve always grafted since I was an apprentice. I’ve known nothing but hard work and this has given me the inspiration to keep going … In a weird, silly way I love it. People who didn’t know me before are saying “Let’s have a look at him and see how he rides”. I’m riding the winners and I’ve gained respect from quite a lot of other trainers.’

  There wasn’t that much to prove anyway. Having been a pony racing champion in Ireland, Dean Gallagher, dreaming of a career as a Flat jockey, began as an apprentice with Jim Bolger. Increasing weight forced him into a career change and he worked for six months with Dessie Hughes to see if he would like the jumping world. He has been in love with it ever since. In England he began with Rod Simpson and then worked for Jenny Pitman before Charlie Brooks took him on as second rider to Graham Bradley at Uplands. He rode Hennessy Gold Cup winner Couldn’t Be Better for Brooks and partnered quality horses like Royal Athlete, on whom he won the Long Walk Hurdle, for Jenny Pitman. A winning Gold Cup ride remains his ambition: ‘That race is the pinnacle. From the word go it is so fast. I’ve ridden in top-class hurdle races but in that race you just can’t afford to miss a beat, you can’t miss a stride. When you come back afterwards you are drained. That is the race I dream about’ …

  Understandably Dean would not, could not talk about the police investigations. But full face on I found a man who was confident of being cleared and in the meantime the likeable Gallagher has showed his mettle by riding more than 30 winners this season, putting him on schedule to beat his previous season’s best of 43. He has shown character, but so has the racing world. It may not be a world in which nobody has ever bent a rule. It is not peopled entirely by those who would take first place in the queue for spotless surplices at the Pearly Gates. But racing’s principled treatment of Dean Gallagher makes even a part-timer proud to be part of it.

  That, it turned out, was only episode one of Dean’s one-man soap opera. He continued to hold his head up. He rode 51 winners that season amid the pointing fingers and the whispers. A couple of months later he was indeed told that, like the other riders concerned, he had no case to answer on the race-fixing charges. But it had not all been as easy as Dean had made it look and he paid a price. To meet his legal fees he had to sell the first house he had ever bought: closing the front door for the last time, he said, was a scene forever etched on his memory. To help fuel his bravado through the bad times he also turned to drink and then to use of a little white powder.

  That was not just a mistake, it was a disaster. A jockey on drugs is a danger to others as well as himself and a six-month ban followed his first positive test. Again Dean Gallagher worked his way back. Again some good people refused to cast him into the wilderness and when he came back he rewarded owner Paul Green and trainer James Fanshawe by winning the 2002 Champion Hurdle on the quirky Hors La Loi II. I caught up with Paul just after the race and his first thought was for his jockey: ‘Today is Dean’s day. He’s fought and he’s never given in. The guy was on the rocks and he’s back again. He’s a superb jockey.’ But then the Bad Fairy struck once more. In France Dean Gallagher once more tested positive for cocaine and this time, at the age of 33, he was banned from riding for eighteen months. Most of us thought we had seen the last of the compact, muscular bundle that is Gallagher in the saddle, a horseman who blends with his mount, creeping quietly through a field of jumpers to strike after the last fence. The professional obituaries were written. Dean’s self-worth fell to pieces and he felt like crawling under a stone.

  But trainer Richard Hannon offered him stable work and PR opportunities with owners. Richard Dunwoody counselled him not to write off his racing life, warning him ‘You’re a long time retired’. The eighteen months passed and then back came the Good Fairy. As Dean’s ban expired, François Doumen’s jockey son Thierry suffered a shoulder injury which ended his career, and his father hired Dean to ride his jumpers. More opportunities followed with François Cottin and Gallagher’s career was extended, largely in France, until he retired at 40 in 2009.

  Of course he was an idiot to have drifted into the use of cocaine in the first place. Burning your boats not just once but twice isn’t exactly a career enhancement. But you can see the strains he faced and in the end it was a remarkable story of one man’s rediscovery of self-worth and of the racing community’s ability to rescue one of its own.

  Kieren Fallon

  Teachers tell you that it is the ones in the class with a little bit of naughtiness who are the most interesting. In racing, the characters who tangle regularly with the authorities, the ones who sail a little close to the wind from time to time and finish up on the front pages as well as the sports pages often have a particular appeal. Over jumps Graham Bradley intrigued me. I enjoyed his cheerful company when writing my book on Lambourn and I was saddened that one of the most talented horsemen we ever saw in the saddle also got himself banned for years for associating with the wrong people. Racing folk remain equally divided, it seems, about the character of former champion Flat jockey Kieren Fallon. It is harder for part-time racing writers to get to know jockeys than it is with the more regularly available trainers. I have only ever had brief conversations with Kieren but I have followed him closely, equally fascinated by his talent and by the turbulence of his career.

  Fallon has figured in court cases, he has been banned for drug-taking, he has had to spend time in clinics to cope with a drinking problem, he has won and lost jobs as stable jockey to three super-power trainers and he has mixed with some of the wrong people. But he also possesses a supreme talent and he has somehow never lost his public appeal.

  When it emerged the day after he had shown ice-cold nerve to win the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe on Dylan Thomas that he was facing a second lengthy ban for cocaine use, many predicted that Fallon’s career was over. But it was not. The week before he returned to the saddle the Racing Post ran a week-long series on Fallon and the day he came back the gate at Lingfield doubled. Now in 2013 he is being classed as a ‘veteran’ rider but he is still first choice for Luca Cumani and he has been drawing rave reviews for some of his performances.

  When Henry Cecil chose his new stable jockey in 1996 I told Spectator readers:

  The racing world has affected to be much surprised that Henry Cecil, England’s most successful trainer, should have chosen Kieren Fallon, the hot-headed bad-boy, as his stable jockey for next season. It has created the sort of consternation that Tony Blair might by appointing Dennis Skinner as Chancellor of the Exchequer or the Queen by opting for Max Clifford as the Press Secretary at Buckingham Palace.

  The stepson of Sir Cecil Boyd-R
ochfort, training in Noel Murless’s old yard, Cecil in some ways personifies the racing Establishment. But what those now fluttering their fans forget is that it takes real determination as well as ability to collect as many trainer’s titles and as many top races as he has done. This is a man dedicated to winning and all the more so since his falling-out with the Maktoums made him determined this season to show he was as good as ever without their horsepower.

  I wrote earlier this year that if I had to choose a jockey to ride the horse carrying my last fiver it would be Kieren Fallon and Cecil has clearly recognised a fellow spirit in the will-to-win department. Together they could produce a formidable racing chemistry. Henry Cecil has been training English Classic winners since Bolkonski took the 2,000 Guineas in 1975, at a time when the accomplished Luca Cumani was Cecil’s assistant. Those who have preceded Fallon as stable jockey include Lester Piggott, who was forced to part ways with the stable when the volcanic Daniel Wildenstein ruled in one of his periodic eruptions that Lester would never ride a horse of his again. There was the silky smooth Joe Mercer, the brilliant young American Steve Cauthen and at one stage that underrated horseman Greville Starkey.

  To those who wonder how Cecil will cope with the wilder side of his new acquisition, one experience with Starkey surely offers a clue. The trainer, jockey and owner Lord Dunraven once went to the Mirabelle to celebrate after winning a big race at Deauville with the filly Katie Cecil. Starkey, who had been wasting hard to take the mount, was somewhat affected by the fine wine and began to perform his celebrated imitation of a barking dog. Noting that the other diners appeared a touch put out by this, Cecil handled it with aplomb. As the bill was requested he looped his napkin around Starkey’s neck and led him, on all fours and still barking, to the door …

  But to return to racing: what raises eyebrows over the Fallon appointment is that he has been notorious for the shortness of his fuse and the regularity of his clashes with racing’s ruling authorities. The most notorious was the six-month ban he received for pulling fellow jockey Stuart Webster from his saddle after a finish at Beverley in 1994. Their weighing-room exchanges afterwards, it seems, were not confined to the verbal. After another fracas when Fallon went for a gap that wasn’t there at Haydock, his eight-day ban cost him the chance of his first century of winners. Even this season there was trouble when Fallon failed to turn up for a Jockey Club inquiry after riding when his medical book pronounced him to be ‘unwell’. But the jockey himself, who sensibly spent his six-month suspension honing his skills by work-riding in California, reckons that at 31 he has settled down.

  It is worth remembering that Joe Mercer, Steve Cauthen and Lester Piggott all won the jockeys’ championship while riding for Cecil and I believe that Ladbroke’s opening offer of 4-1 against Fallon winning it next season is a price worth taking.

  Fallon parted from Henry Cecil amid lurid tabloid headlines about the trainer’s wife, and the Cecils later divorced. Kieren Fallon then rode for another Newmarket giant, Sir Michael Stoute. Again there were run-ins, over timekeeping and reliability. But there were also some sublime moments of success before Fallon was attracted back to his native Ireland to ride for Aidan O’Brien and the Coolmore team. Among the great moments from the Stoute days was Fallon’s victory on Kris Kin in the 2003 Derby. I wrote then:

  Fame of a sort is so easily acquired today. Minor celebs can fashion a career from little more than getting out of taxis in short skirts. A couple of gossip-column mentions can briefly make a chef fashionable enough to charge three times what his food is worth. So let us celebrate real quality when we see it, as those of us lucky enough to be at Epsom on Derby Day did in the richest race ever run in Europe.

  The magic of racing is that the truth is often so much more exciting than the fiction. This year’s Derby was won by a horse Kris Kin who is described by his highly experienced trainer Sir Michael Stoute as one of the laziest he has ever trained, running for only the fourth time in his career. The horse is owned by Arab businessman Saeed Suhail, who had been happy for the trainer to scratch it from the race last autumn and then buy his way back in five days before the race by paying a £90,000 supplement. And it was ridden by a jockey, Kieren Fallon, who was not long ago dropped off his horses by that same owner, a jockey who nearly lost the use of his arm in a horrific accident three years ago and who spent 30 days of the past winter in a clinic sorting out an alcohol problem, but who after spending six years grafting for his first 40 winners has become a towering presence in his sport, a sure bet for the jockeys’ championship as long as he wants to keep chasing it. Fallon has worked for his fame and deserves every minute of it.

  Kieren’s ride on Kris Kin was a truly great riding performance. The horse was over-excited at the start, sweating copiously, but somehow Kieren kept him calm, knowing that he would be asking questions of him early in the race.

  All through the Derby Day card the importance of being up with the pace in races on the switchback course was amply demonstrated and Fallon forced his mount to compete from the start, chasing the leading group up the hill. When the scrimmaging started at the top as the field tightened towards the inside rail it became pretty rough. But Fallon is not a man to give quarter and his mount, as he put it afterwards, was ‘man enough to take them’ when he got a couple of bumps. The Derby course really is a test of character as well as ability.

  Round Tattenham Corner Kris Kin was in with a chance but no more. To many of us in the stands it looked at the two-furlong pole as though Fallon had been pushing for a while, but he says he could feel that when he dug deep his mount was going to answer. It was then that the genius of a great jockey’s split-second racing decisions showed. He sensed the leaders had gone for home early and rather than going hell for leather after them he waited, determined not to ask the final question too soon. I wrote:

  It was the kind of decision that could only be made by a jockey full of confidence, a jockey riding the way Fallon is doing this season, as if he has been clapped on the shoulder by the Almighty and told that it is his destiny to win. A couple of hundred yards out Fallon galvanised his mount, every muscle in that formidably strong 5ft 4in body of his brought into play to will his mount forward. A horse turned within a few minutes from boy to man answered, stretched and grabbed the ground. They won going away by a length. Saeed Suhail’s £90,000 gamble became an £852,000 prize.

  For the bookies it was a disaster. When Kieren announced he would be riding Kris Kin the odds tumbled from 25-1 to 14-1. On the day of the race, a massive racecourse gamble clipped that price down to 6-1. As William Hill’s representative stated: ‘Turnover is through the roof thanks to the open nature of this year’s race, but the roof has caved in.’ In the old days, the kind of people who bet only twice a year, on the Grand National and the Derby, used to ask what Lester Piggott was riding and plump for his mount. A fair few nowadays probably go for Frankie Dettori, who is yet to win the race. But now there is a real Fallon Factor.

  (Frankie, incidentally, was not letting the fact that he had now ridden eleven Derby losers get to him. I encountered him as he rode down the chute to the course on Muhareb, his mount in the next race. He was singing.)

  The most notorious episode in Kieren Fallon’s career was his arrest as part of an alleged race-fixing inquiry, a case that when it made it to court was thrown out by the judge. So how was the racing world, ever ready to insist that smoke rarely filters upwards without some combustion beneath, going to behave on his return? We soon knew.

  In September 2009 I wrote about his comeback, listing his past misdemeanours and bans, the drink and drug problems, the departures from big stables and the hideous injury which threatened to cost him the use of one arm and left him with a scar from elbow to shoulder.

  Should we cheer him or shun him? There was nothing special about the race on Wolverhampton’s all-weather track last Friday night, a twelve-furlong handicap won by Paul Howling’s Our Kes, nothing special exce
pt the fact that the jockey on board had ridden his last winner in Britain back in July 2006, at which point his licence was suspended because police believed he was involved in a race-fixing conspiracy …

  If racing had a naughty step it would by now have moulded to fit the Fallon backside. The jockey who so often finds himself in the headlines for the wrong reasons jumps with unerring aim from the frying pan into the fire. A man who can enter a room of 40 people and, by his own admission, somehow end up talking to the dodgiest character there, he could almost list hara-kiri as a hobby.

  When the last drug offence was revealed one headline summed up the rest: ‘Fallon: no way back’. Some of the best judges in the sport wrote his racing obituary: ‘He will be yesterday’s man by the time his suspension expires in the late summer of 2009’. Yet now Fallon is racing again. The Racing Post devoted a week of special features to his return. The Lingfield gate nearly doubled on the day he started riding again. And the racing authorities, who could have gone on pursuing him over matters revealed in the failed court case, have instead agreed to his resuming riding, albeit subject to random drug tests and with his acceptance that he has in the past been ‘reckless’ in his attitude to passing inside information.

  They are right to do so, partly because a man who has served his time must be allowed the chance of redemption but also because his is a sublime talent. In an insightful biography of Fallon Andrew Longmore revealed the insecurities which have dogged the plasterer’s son from rural Ireland who left school barely able to read and write. But despite those insecurities and a slow start in racing Fallon has ridden fifteen British Classic winners and won the jockey’s championship six times. His life out of the saddle has sometimes been a disorganised shambles but when riding he is utterly controlled. He may have had trouble coping with his own demons but he has many times shown a sympathetic genius at sorting out the minds of difficult horses.