Kieren Fallon vows to stay in California in bid to revive riding career

http://www.theguardian.com/sport/2015/feb/19/kieren-fallon-vows-stay-california-to-revive-career

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“Best way to live in California is to be from somewheres else,” Cormac McCarthy wrote in his 2005 novel, No Country For Old Men. For Kieren Fallon, who moved to California less than six months ago to recapture a “buzz” for race-riding that had fizzled like a spent catherine wheel, McCarthy seems to have tapped into a truth.

“I’m really enjoying it. There’s no traveling. Everyone wants to look after you here,” says Fallon, as we hover outside the jocks’ room at Santa Anita on an afternoon when florid-faced racegoers cluster like bunches of scarlet tulips beneath what shade is offered from a bulging overhead sun.

Fresh from a mount for the trainer Eoin Harty in Godolphin’s blue and sweat-sheened in a sleeveless vest, Fallon’s thoughts clearly do not stray too far from memories of racetracks buried beneath frost, snow and temporary covers.

“Back home, you’re going out there with your head dropped. It’s very hard to get motivated. Here, you’re doing cartwheels out to the paddock, you know what I mean? The sun is shining on you here, you know. That’s the difference.”

Like many moments in Fallon’s career his announcement last autumn that he was relocating to California carried with it an air of the theatrical. But a broad look at the vista reveals that it came with a good dose of logic, too. First, and most obviously, the big race mounts were drying up like an aquifer in the desert.

Sure, last year in Britain started all accolades and smiles in the Fallon camp. He rode Night of Thunder to a stunning 40-1 victory in the 2,000 Guineas, temporarily silencing Kingman’s large retinue of acolytes. He then ousted Silvestre De Sousa from the iron throne at Saeed Bin Suroor’s yard, cementing the alliance with a thrilling victory on Cavalryman in the Group Two Goodwood Cup over his stablemate Ahzeemah.

But the quick-spinning catherine wheel of the first half of the year swiftly lost momentum in the second half. And amid the dying vestiges of the season Godolphin announced that young princes William Buick and James Doyle were the latest to be brought on board to fashion their royal blue. “I just don’t know what it was. You can be hot and cold. After Royal Ascot I just don’t know what – it’s so hard to explain.”

The other less visible crumbs leading to that decision can be followed all the way back to the early 1990s, when he first headed west to California for a spell one winter with trainer Rodney Rash. At the time Fallon was still very much a work in progress at the North Yorkshire stable of Lynda Ramsden. Yet throughout any number of subsequent changes of stable during the months of the European summer he has been a regular winter fixture in California and Florida ever since.

While his race-riding buzz may have returned in California, though, the drought hanging over his win percentages has, like that of the state, proved harder to quench. He won three races from 25 rides at the back end of last year and has managed a lone victory from 23 mounts during the start of this.

“Would you say you’re disappointed with the way things have panned out so far?”

“I would, in a way. But one thing I’m not is blind. I can see there are so many jockeys here. It’s tough.”

That comment is worthy of inclusion in an Understatement of the Year competition, for Fallon’s move to California has coincided with a swollen jockey pool rendered increasingly more idle by racetrack closures and, paradoxically, shrinking field sizes.

“It’s not only that there are so many jockeys here. All the best jockeys are here. You’ve got Alex Solis riding his 5,000th winner. You’ve got Kent Desormeaux, who can go anywhere in the world as one of the greatest. Gary Stevens, Mike Smith, [Rafael] Bejarano, [Joe] Talamo, the list goes on. Look at Elvis [Trujillo] – he’s a little riding machine, you know what I mean? And then, on the big days, you have the likes of Julien Leparoux and Joel Rosario coming here.

“But,” he continues, emphasising the conjunction like a dart, “I didn’t come out here thinking I was going to take off straight away. I came out here for experience and to learn something more. I remember Mick Kinane saying a few years ago, ‘When you stop learning in racing, it’s time to pack up because there’s always something to learn.’”

The stuttering start Fallon has endured in California is one of the reasons why he has decided to head out to Dubai for the remainder of the Carnival. “I’ve decided to go there for a little bit. There’s only six or so weeks left [of the Carnival]. The best six weeks, though, so I think I would be a little silly if I didn’t go there, you know.”

He is conscious, though, that stepping away to Dubai, however briefly, leaves the door ajar for other lean, hungry jocks to weedle their way into those stables he has already forged goodwill with – such as trainers Eoin Harty, Simon Callaghan and Bruce Headley.

“Neil Drysdale has been good to me, too – he’s got nice horses this year and he’s going to win plenty of races. That’s why I’m sick that I have to just leave for a couple of weeks.” Lady Bamford, an owner he rode for earlier in the afternoon, is another to have pledged her allegiance. “I rode Sariska for her in the Champion Stakes and finished third [behind Twice Over]. It’s easy when you have nice owners like that to ride for. She told me just then, ‘I’m really glad you’re here.’”

“And the intention is to return here after Dubai?”

“Oh yeah, straight away. I love it here, so I do.”

What Fallon’s hoping for on his return at the end of March, by which time the Run for the Roses will have turned into a full-throttled gallop towards May, is a little more elbow-room in the corner of the jocks’ room reserved for the big hitters. “That’s when you’ll have other jockeys going somewhere for the big races on weekends. You’ll have Mike and Gary going out of town. So that leaves a little bit of an opening.”

A return to Dubai certainly possesses an element of the prophetic, for it was when he was in Dubai this time last year that thoughts of retirement were coming to the fore. “I didn’t seem to have the same kick – I couldn’t seem to get the right feel.” Winning the Group Two Maktoum Challenge on Prince Bishop put a temporary stay on the decision. “I just got the feel back again. But I still said I would give it a bit more time.” Prince Bishop followed up that success with a top-flight victory a month later. “Then I won another race on the grass for Godolphin, and you know, I’m still here.”

Still here he may be but for how much longer? The conversation steers towards retirement and to how long he can continue. Fallon will be 50 on Sunday but California is nothing if not a mecca for top athletes reaching free bus-pass status in their chosen sport. Turn to George Best and to David Beckham as proof. And the roster of jockeys still plying their trade in California has a touch of the Dad’s Army about it too, with Stevens, Smith and Russell Baze in Northern California among the higher-profile jockeys who have already hit, or are poised to reach, the half-ton mark.

“Gary’s riding great and he’s in his fifties. Look at Mike Smith [49]. They’re riding as well as ever. It’s not a sport like football where you need to be physical, where you need brute strength. It’s all about feel and knack and getting horses to run for you. If horses run for you, you’re going to win races. And as long as your body’s in good shape, you’re going to go on. It’s tough, but that’s the way I like it. If it wasn’t tough, then we wouldn’t improve. But it is fucking tough here, and I’m enjoying it.

“The thing is, I’ve never felt as well in my life. I’m fit as a flea,” he continues, eager to hammer home the point, as much to me, it seems, as to himself. “I don’t have to sweat. If I go for a run here I run to the top [of the Santa Anita turf course]. I go for a run up there most days of the week. I work out and do a bit of skipping. There’s no traveling here. There’s no hard work. You’re ponied down to the start. Honestly, it is a lot easier – but it’s harder to ride races here. The fields are very closely handicapped, that’s the hard part.”

Tony McCoy’s retirement announcement the day previously had passed him by and Fallon pauses in disbelief. “What? When? I didn’t know that,” he replies, genuinely taken aback, before a knowing, wry smile spreads across his face. “I’ll believe it when I see it. Tony, he won’t retire,” he says, turning towards the jocks’ room, digesting the news for a moment.

“The thing about Tony, if he does retire, it’ll be because of his weight. He’s a big lad. But he’s a lovely fella, a great worker. He’s got a heart as big as a lion. Remember Wichita Lineman? That was one of the greatest rides of all time,” and with that Fallon disappears back into the jocks’ room.

While Wichita Lineman answered McCoy’s exhortations with equally lavish helpings of grit and gumption that feted day up the Cheltenham hill, Fallon’s two further mounts this particular afternoon, Bourbon Rose and Night Badger, respond to his typically persistent urgings with notable indifference – that dichotomy perhaps emblematic of where the two great champion jockeys’ careers are at present.

Still, when Fallon later springs from the jocks’ room, showered and changed, he does not exactly perform cartwheels across the gold-dappled paddock but marches towards and inside the grandstand clearly unperturbed by another blank afternoon. We take a seat at a table near the mouth of the entrance surrounded by a noisy cabal of racegoers clad in shorts and t-shirts with large plastic beer mugs in hand – similar to Windsor racecourse of a Monday evening in August – and resume where we left off, with thoughts that next month the UK Flat turf season will be poised to begin in earnest.

“The summer’s great - you’ve got your Royal Ascots and your Oaks and your Derbys. It’s great racing, the best racing in the world. But it’s the same here all year round. Look at what was here yesterday,” he says, a nod to the Grade Two San Antonio Stakes, when the two titans of American racing, California Chrome and Shared Belief, slugged it out down Santa Anita’s home stretch.

“Look at how exciting that was yesterday – the good horses, the big crowds. It helps you get up. You dance longer that way. The problem is, there’s no money in England. It’s all right for the big meets. But even then, look at the 2,000 Guineas, a Classic [worth a little over £250,000 to the winner last year]. Then you’ve got a $500,000 Grade Two race here yesterday. That’s what you’re up against.

“And petrol is so expensive back there,” he adds, warming to a gripe that has clearly long rankled. “You’re putting at least £100 a day into your car and you’re riding for £2,000 races. It’s a pity really because we have the best racing in England. The turnover is so high – the profits of the bookmakers every year are millions. You’ve got Betfair as well. But everything is going out of racing and nothing is going back into racing like it is here.”

Financial rewards aside, the more sedentary life of a Californian jockey holds pluses galore for Fallon in comparison with the itinerancy of his life back in the UK. “At home, you’re averaging five to six hours a day in the car, going racing then going home. It’s even further if you have to go to Salisbury or if you have to go to Chester or up to Haydock. The traffic is horrendous everywhere in England.”

With that in mind, it is hardly surprising that he believes Britain should adopt a system more closely aligned with the that in the US, where a racetrack can host a single meeting for months at a time.

“You’ve got your Ascots and your July meetings and your Ebor meetings. With those, you’re more central for the week. You don’t have to travel. I think it should be more centralised like that at home. I think wherever the meet is, they should have three or four days racing there, or even stay there the entire week. You can base the horses there. You don’t have to be traveling up and down every day.”

“Irrespective of all those things you’ve mentioned, what kind of offer could tempt you back?”

“There’s nothing in England,” he says, tucking the question swiftly into bed, though he admits that enough big-race carrots dangled before him over the summer could certainly prove tantalising. “If I had a good ride for the big meetings and the Classics, then I could go back and ride in them. But other than that? No. I’d still love to go back and try and win the Guineas again, you know, if there’s a Guineas ride. It’s such a lucky race for me. I mean, how many times have I won them, the 1,000 and 2,000 Guineas?”

(The answer is nine: four in the 1,000 Guineas, with Sleepytime, Wince, Russian Rhythm and Virginia Waters; and five in the 2,000 Guineas, with King’s Best, Golan, Footstepsinthesand, George Washington and Night of Thunder).

His fine record in the first two Classics of the season he credits to winters spent in the US, sharpening to a razor’s point the machinery of his race instincts – a potent weapon he has used in devastating fashion in years past upon his return. “If you can think quicker than the other jockeys at home, you’re two steps ahead of them.” And that fine-edged sharpness has proved particularly useful at Breeders’ Cup time, especially when teamed with an intimate knowledge of the racetrack.

“Remember when Ryan Moore won [the 2013 Breeders’ Cup Turf] on Magician when he beat The Fugue? I remember saying to Ryan beforehand, ‘If you hit the front turning for home here at Santa Anita, you’re in trouble. It’s a long way up there.’ And Ryan said, ‘No it’s not, it’s only a furlong and a half.’ So I said, ‘Yeah, but you’re sweeping around the bend from the three-eights. You’re kicking out further than you think.’

“I remember that lesson from Edgar Prado. When I won [the 2003 Breeders’ Cup Filly and Mare Turf] on Islington, Prado kicked for home [aboard L’Ancresse] at the top of the stretch and I was always going to run him down, and it’s been stuck in my head ever since then. If you kick for home at the top of the stretch, you will get nailed, so you will. You have to wait until you’re well into the straight. And that’s what Ryan did on Magician when he beat The Fugue. [Moore] did the same with Dank. He took his time. Ryan is just different class.”

When the Breeders’ Cup heads to Del Mar in 2017, he expects the disparity between European jockeys with and without the boot-camp grounding of US race-riding experience to widen.

“I love Del Mar. It’s a beautiful track. But the grass course is so tight and it’s going to be tough for those European jockeys that haven’t been based in American. The likes of myself, Frankie Dettori and Olivier Peslier, we’ve been coming over for years and we know how to ride the tracks. Those who haven’t, they’re going to be completely lost. If you’re not in the right place at the right time, you know, phroaw,” he says, blowing out his cheeks. “Jesus.”

With that Fallon begins to wriggle in his seat and he splays both hands flat on the table before him to rise. “Anything else?” he asks, casting his eyes about the room, and it is time to ask what the future holds.

“Look, I’m at the track every morning. Most of the other boys here, you won’t see them there, but I’m at the track every morning. I ride plenty of work. I love breezing around there of a morning. All I can do is keep chipping away, and then, maybe one day … ” he says, letting the thought drift off. “Look, as long as you work hard, my thing is this: wherever you go in the world, if you want to get on in the world and you work hard, you’ll always get rewarded.”

Whatever doubts have followed Fallon through his career, they have never circled round his work ethic. Henry Cecil noted it as far back as when Fallon first took over the reins at Warren Place. And when one considers the professional depths from which Cecil clawed his way back to the top, it is entirely plausible that his former stable jockey will achieve the same feat from a far less favourable position. “It’s about getting on the right ones,” Fallon says. “Getting on the right ones and getting on the winners.”