End of an Era As Fallon Retires Cont
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
TUESDAY, 5 JULY, 2016 NO AUSTRALIAN SEASON FOR >KINGDOM= END OF AN ERA Animal Kingdom (Leroidesanimaux {Brz}--Dalicia (Ger), by AS FALLON RETIRES Acatenango {Ger}) will not shuttle to Australia for the 2016 breeding season and will remain at Darley=s Jonabell Farm in Kentucky when he completes the current American season. The GI Kentucky Derby and G1 Dubai World Cup winner has done three seasons at Arrowfield Stud with his first Australian- bred 2-year-olds due to hit the track next season. Arrowfield=s Bloodstock Manager Jon Freyer commented, AIn a very competitive marketplace, the fourth season is always the most difficult. We have great faith in Animal Kingdom and have decided to take a longer-term view of his stallion career, so we=re resting him now, after he=s served three very big books in Kentucky and six consecutive seasons north and south.@ Cont. p9 IN TDN AMERICA TODAY Kris Kin winning the 2003 Epsom Derby with Kieren Fallon aboard ZIPESSA STRIKES AT PARX Racing Post Empyrean Stables’s Zipessa (City Zip) went wire-to-wire to win the GIII Dr. James Penny Memorial S., the lone North American by Chris McGrath graded event on the holiday schedule, at Parx Monday. Click or If there is something poignantly unsurprising about his exit tap here to go straight to TDN America. from the stage, slipping away into the shadows just as he seemed to be mastering a new script, then the least Kieren Fallon deserves is that we remember the way he once presented himself so boldly in the starkest of spotlights. For he now requires all the fortitude and indomitability we so admired, in his pomp, to meet far graver challenges beyond the sight of all, and the comprehension of most. From the outside, his recent vacillations may have suggested mere caprice: the fresh starts, first in the United States and then in Ireland; the enthusiastic talk again dissolving into disillusion and disappearance. It seemed as though the lightest of gusts could ease the pegs of his personality from their mooring, leaving his reputation flapping wildly whichever way the wind might blow. But the announcement of his retirement reproved any such condescension. Those who had presumed Fallon simply to be in denial about the erosion of his professional gifts, at 51, on Monday learned that he has instead been teetering over the abyss of what the Turf Club chief medical officer now diagnoses as "severe depression" for around three years. Cont. p2 TDN EUROPE/INTERNATIONAL • PAGE 2 OF 10 • THETDN.COM TUESDAY • 5 JULY, 2016 End of an Era as Fallon Retires Cont. from p1 Coolmore's fidelity to Fallon, when he was among several men Albeit the horribly corrosive properties of this condition are eventually charged with corruption in 2006, was in an edifying nowadays recognised far more widely than was once the case, contrast with the British racing authorities. In a flagrant the fact remains all departure from the axiom that a man should be treated as the available innocent until proven guilty, they suspended his licence and so treatments must condemned him to a horribly ambiguous existence--still feted in still be harnessed Ireland or France, yet a pariah in Britain. If this purgatory to such inner undoubtedly contributed to his mystique, it also compounded resources as he can the fragility of temperament first disclosed when Fallon, as an summon for what evolving talent on the northern circuit, had been banned for six must feel the most months for hauling a rival jockey from his saddle as they pulled solitary and private up. Other nadirs included an alcohol clinic and two suspensions of battles. It can for failed drug tests in France, the second following almost Kieren Fallon returns on what was his last only be a comfort, immediately after the collapse of his trial at the Old Bailey. winner, Blairmayne at Fairyhouse June 8 then, to remember Those more familiar than the police investigators with the Racing Post those times when day-to-day intricacies of racing could tell from the moment the Fallon seemed gates opened that the prosecution case--above all those almost a force of nature, a monument to human strength, elements relating to the most implacably imposing his will on the chaotic variety of factors that celebrated defendant--was determine the outcome of a horse race. based on a series of excitable Seldom in the modern era has any jockey brought such a misapprehensions. Sure enough, communicable air of invincibility to his work. As a late starter, the judge ordered the jury to Fallon never achieved a streamlined or elegant style. But you dismiss the charges even before could always pick him out, forcing a quart of effort into the pint the defence began its response. pot of his mount's capacity, his reins loose, his back straight, his Having supported Fallon through head bobbing. The whip served only as the bass drum, brought his long ordeal, however, his into play late on to keep the rhythm going, to keep his mount employers understandably ran from losing the thread, the hectic forward pulse instead vested out of patience after the second in knees and elbows. You can picture Fallon raising it now, that drugs offence resulted in an slow, deliberate wind-up, one-two-three, the momentary 18-month worldwide ban. bracing of his convulsed physique, and four! And then straight That incorrigibility, that back into the larger, longer flow of inexorable commitment. self-destructive streak, has Kieren Fallon in action recently Between 1997 and 2003 there were six British championships, always lent Fallon some edge of on The Curragh gallops Racing Post the only hiatus caused by a serious injury at Royal Ascot in 2000. danger. Craggy and pale and His three Derby winners, among 16 British Classics altogether, brooding, he is capable of receiving questions with a long stare included a masterpiece on Kris Kin (Kris S) in 2003. Run that race and an inscrutable silence--only to break into a charming grin, a dozen times and give him a dozen different jockeys, and few and some teasing rejoinder. On the whole, he has only ever believe that the result would ever have been the same. By the been a menace to himself, to the extent that he has long since time John Magnier and his partners at Coolmore were seeking a seemed to have used up a ninth life. But in his happiest periods, new rider, in 2005, Fallon so bestrode the weighing room that when unfettered by doubt or dejection, he could certainly they felt able to disregard even the fact that he had been intimidate even the most accomplished of rivals as they sought arrested the previous September by police investigating to stifle the ferocious expression of something akin to genius. race-fixing allegations. Cont. p3 TDN EUROPE/INTERNATIONAL • PAGE 3 OF 10 • THETDN.COM TUESDAY • 5 JULY, 2016 End of an Era as Fallon Retires Cont. Taareef wasn=t beaten far in the rush for the minor placings That does not seem too strong a word, certainly, for his ride on behind easy winner The Gurkha in the G1 Poule d=Essai des Dylan Thomas (Ire) (Danehill) in the 2007 G1 Prix de l'Arc de Poulains and the Shadwell colt then bettered that effort over an Triomphe. How icily he pulled that race out of the fire, on the extra furlong, winning the G3 Prix Daphnis. But Taareef=s efforts very eve of his trial at the Old Bailey. But that told you all you pale in comparison with those of Hawkbill, the highly needed to know, really; Fallon was always at his strongest, at his progressive Godolphin colt who stretched his winning sequence most serene, on horseback; never felt so liberated from his to six when he defeated The Gurkha in Saturday=s cares as when in that rarefied "zone" of instinct and adrenaline. G1 Coral-Eclipse. He will no longer have that succour. But there remain many Kitten=s Joy had previously gone close to hitting the Group 1 other ways he can profit from his affinity with horses, from a target with Cymric, another Godolphin-owned colt from his judgement perhaps 2013 crop. Cymric was beaten only a short neck in last year=s more reliable on G1 Prix Jean-Luc Lagardere. the gallops than These fine 3-year-olds aren=t the first black-type winners in has sometimes Europe for the Ramsey Farm stallion. Several of his progeny been the case in have made their mark in the admittedly quieter waters of Italian getting a human racing. Real Solution--future winner of the GI Arlington Million measure of himself and GI Woodford Reserve or others. He Manhattan H.--learnt his adores the daily trade in Italy, where his wins cycles of a racing included the Listed Premio Falllon drives home Dylan Thomas in the Arc yard, and used to Botticelli. There have also Racing Post talk whimsically of been Italian stakes successes training himself for Steaming Kitten someday. The notorious stresses of the profession are perhaps (G3 Premio del Giubileo), more than he could sensibly embrace, but there is no reason Kitten On The Run and Hawkbill | Racing Post why a young man like Michael O'Callaghan should cease to Kitten=s Lady, while Jolly Good Kitten was a listed winner in the profit from his experience and expertise. French Provinces. As Fallon has said himself, he "came from nowhere". He did We have also seen Bobby=s Kitten, winner of the GI Breeders= not sit on a horse until he was 18.