Dubai: Six-time British champion jockey Kieren Fallon said that his 2007 trial for conspiracy to defraud was the beginning of the end for his career and prompted the depression that forced him to retire last summer.
The 52-year-old Irishman was accused of deliberately holding up horses to increase their odds of winning future races but when it went to trial at the Old Bailey, the case collapsed due to a lack of evidence.
Fallon had been British champion jockey for six years straight from 1997 to 2003, with the exception of 2000 when he got injured in a fall at Ascot, but his decline started as soon as the accusations of race-fixing first surfaced in 2004.
“It ended my career to an extent,” he told Gulf News in an exclusive interview at Meydan last week, where he has been workriding for Godolphin since November in the build-up to this week’s World Cup as part of his recovery from depression..
“I didn’t have the same confidence around trainers I was riding for, like I had before. That went, and even though I was hanging in there, it was all gone.”
If not for the trial, he said: “I would have been champion jockey for as long as I wanted, every year I won it nobody else came close.
“The worst part was we hadn’t done anything wrong, if we had done something wrong you can understand it, you can take it, but when you haven’t…
“People say there’s no smoke without fire, and mud always sticks regardless, no matter how innocent you are.
“It’s one of the reasons [for my depression], and why I know that is, because over the years you could have asked me about any horse I rode and I would have known everything about the horse.
“But after the Old Bailey case, ask me what I rode six months ago and it was a mental block, people would say: ‘remember we went here and did that’ and I couldn’t.
“When I came out in the trial I hadn’t a clue what was going on, I didn’t know who the other people were. I was dragged into it and I was the only scamp they were looking for and they know that, it will all come out shortly.”
Asked how bad his depression had got after retiring last July, the winner of over 2,000 races including 15 British Classics replied: “As low as you want to be, but I was lucky that I met Dr. Adrian McGoldrick, because I really didn’t enjoy life, things were bad and he got me on medication, then I spent six weeks in St. Patrick’s Hospital in Dublin.
“When I got out of there I felt really good and then I came over here [in November], but it’s been tough so it has.
“This is amazing,” he added of being in Dubai. “I’ve been coming over here for over 10 years now for the carnival months and I really enjoy working here, it’s a great holiday. We don’t really class it as work.
“I enjoy riding out in the mornings and then playing golf and squash in the afternoons, they are all good lads as well,” he added of his Godolphin colleagues.
With the drying up of winning rides and the ever increasing demands on his body, he said it was the right decision to retire. “I didn’t know what I wanted to do and I probably should have retired a few years ago, I shouldn’t have kept going, but like everything else you keep trying to hang onto something, and it wasn’t there, it was gone.
“I didn’t feel good and I didn’t look good, you can see yourself when you’re riding, you know what you’re capable of and it just wasn’t working for me.”
There’s no chance of a comeback, he added: “It’s a young person’s sport, and if I get a fall at my age now, we don’t bounce the same way.”
The day after his trial collapsed in December 2007 - during which he had been suspended for 15 months from racing in the UK - he received a worldwide ban of 18 months for testing positive for a recreational drug after a race in France in August 2007.
It was his second drugs ban after having earlier served six months for testing positive after another race in France in July 2006, as he struggled to come to terms with his impending trial and the break-up of his marriage.
Earlier on in his career in 1994, he had been given a six-month ban for violent conduct for pulling fellow jockey Stuart Webster off his horse.
“There’s lots I’d change,” he admitted, looking back upon his career. “I probably kept the wrong company.
“Passive aggressive,” he laughed. “I wish I’d learned what those words meant a long time ago. I didn’t learn what that meant until probably last year. “It means I should be saying ‘no’ instead of saying ‘yes’ and agreeing to go along with things.
“To be honest with you though, I’ve never really been in trouble but for a few speeding fines outside of racing and that’s about it. Most of mine have been involved around racing, you know, the fight with another jockey, things like that.
“I remember Jack Ramsden [his former trainer] saying the first time I got a ban for pulling Webster off: ‘there’s no such thing as bad publicity’, so I don’t know, and he’s a clever man.
“I think a lot of it has been blown out of proportion, particularly the Old Bailey case, nine weeks, three and a half years, for nothing, you know what I mean? And it was proven.
“I like it if I can do more good than bad, especially around younger riders, a lot of them come to me for advice and I like to be able to help them and I enjoy that, you know, it makes me feel good.”
Moving forward, Fallon - who grew up riding wild horses bareback around his native west coast of Ireland- said he would like to become a trainer next. “I think I’m ready for it now, it’s time I got up and started doing something again.
“I’d like to be involved in training, I want to be around horses and I think I’d be good at it because I love them . I’m more comfortable around horses than I am with people.
“I’ve got the summer to work something out, but if not I’ll be back here next year.”
Kieren Fallon factfile
Total wins: 2253
British Champion Jockey wins: six, 1997, 98, 99, 01, 02, 03
British Classic wins: 15
2,000 Guineas: five, 2000, 01, 05, 06, 14
1,000 Guineas: four, 1997, 99, 03, 05
Epsom Derby: three, 1999, 03, 04
Epsom Oaks: three, 1997, 99, 04
Dubai World Cup night wins: three
Golden Shaheen, once, 2012
Sheema Classic, two, 1999, 2000
* Kieren Fallon featured in three Dubai World Cup races but never won. He finished eighth on Borgia in 1998, sixth on Gitano Hernando in 2010 and ninth on Prince Bishop in 2014.
