Kieren Fallon at Gulfstream

[garyoz]

Article from the Sporting Life:

http://www.sportinglife.com/racing/news/story_get.dor?STORY_NAME=racing/04/12/20/RACING_Fallon.html

I heard the Ron Anderson interview on TVG last Friday and was surprised to hear that he would act as the agent to both Bailey and Fallon. Fallon came in to ride at Churchill during its last weekend, during the jockey boycott and looked impressive. With Anderson handled his mounts, you gotta watch him.

I notice he was riding at Wolverhampton. Never been there but did play it in the UK books. I understand that it is an all-weather track that does not have a great deal of charm. I also remember it ran at night. The move to The Gulf has be an uptick.

[Valuist]

He might be the best grass rider in the world.

[tholl]

I think he was only riding at Wolverhampton to reach the 200 for the year.

[jfdinneen]

For the benefit of those not familiar with his career to date, Kieron Fallon (Irish Jockey) has won the English Flat Jockeys Championship six times in the last eight years. Added to that, he has won many Grade 1 races in Europe, Asia, and the USA during the same period.

He has a more upright riding posture than most of his peers and he rides with a long rein, which he shortens when he wants his mount to quicken. His characteristic racing style is to hold up his mount in mid pack and come late from off the pace with a storming finish. An excellent judge of pace, he is rarely beaten in a close finish.

Apparently, despite all his sucesses to date, he is looking forward to riding at Gulfstream Park in order to improve his riding skills! For me, this kind of attitude speaks volumes for his success!

Finally, I have to add that his career has been dogged by accusations of race-fixing. However, the jury in the court of public opinion continues to side with Fallon.

Best wishes,


John

[46zilzal]

One of these days this guy will learn how to break a horse and then he might be competetive.

[46zilzal]

GULFSTREAM is NOT the place to try to come off the pace.

[horsemaven]

Gulfsteam is NOT the place to come off the pace EXCEPT for the turf.

[cj]

Gulfsteam is NOT the place to come off the pace EXCEPT for the turf.

How could you possibly know this? They have yet to run a race on either surface.

[horsemaven]

CJ...your point is well-taken. I had forgotten that the turf course at Gulfstream had been rebuilt in addition to the main track. So we really don't know at this time what style will be advantageous. However, since the vast majority of the turf courses in the United States favor late speed, I'll be leaning in that direction until proven otherwise.

Mike

[46zilzal]

thought they rebuilt the stands not the course

[cj]

thought they rebuilt the stands not the course

They have rebuilt the courses, the stands will be done as well, but for now, its tents. The Main Track will now be 1 1/8, and I think the Turf will be 1 mile.

[Valuist]

Fallon will be at Calder as well. He has a few mounts for this Thursday.

[tholl]

One of these days this guy will learn how to break a horse and then he might be competetive.

Having seen today's results, I guess he must have learned :)

[46zilzal]

he has adapted

[Buddha]

I give him a lot of credit on the turf races at GP. I think he still has some learning to do with dirt races, but in time he will get the hang of them better. I hope he is underlooked while racing here, and maybe get a nice price on some of his horses.

[mauvais]

Fallon finds new ring of confidence in America



Greg Wood in New Orleans
Tuesday January 18, 2005
The Guardian

For a man who has just suffered two of the more frustrating days in his riding career, Kieren Fallon is in an admirably upbeat mood. He is sitting in a seafood bar five minutes' drive from New Orleans airport sipping an orange juice and watching a man shucking muddy oysters at the rate of five a minute.
"Look at the muscles in that guy's arms," he says, which is quite a compliment from a man whose own lean forearms appear to use steel cable to connect his hands to his shoulders. "Now that is a job that I just couldn't do."

At this precise moment, Fallon should be at work too, on a filly called Tara's Touch in a $100,000 race at Fair Grounds, 10 miles down the road. Thanks to a three-hour delay to his flight from Fort Lauderdale, though, he arrived in New Orleans just a few minutes too late to take the ride.

Fallon is keen to know the result, and this being America, the bar's television is strictly reserved for basketball and the NFL play-offs. A call to Julie, his wife, in Newmarket brings the news that Tara's Touch, ridden by a spare local jockey, finished second to a 20-1 outsider, beaten a length. Fallon clearly suspects that it might have been one place better with him in the plate, and that the delay has just cost him the best part of $7,000.

This setback arrives 24 hours after an extraordinary downpour washed out the card at Gulfstream Park, just half an hour before Fallon's only ride. Yet after some brief, understandable curses, the relaxed, cheerful Fallon quickly returns

It is not an image that made many appearances during the last Flat season, when despite reaching 200 winners in the year, the jockey suffered a number of indignities both in and out of the saddle.

In March, the News Of The World branded him "The Fixer" after a misjudged ride on Ballinger Ridge at Lingfield - a claim which is the subject of an ongoing libel action - while later in the year he was one of 25 people arrested by the City of London Police investigating allegations of conspiracy to defraud.

He is currently on police bail, and no charges have been made against him. On the track, meanwhile, his cherished status as champion jockey was prised from his grasp by Frankie Dettori, though there were obvious high points too, including the victory of North Light in the Derby, and Ouija Board's winning run, which included the Oaks and the Breeders' Cup Filly & Mare Turf.

America, though, has clearly given him a fresh outlook on the business of riding, and he is looking forward to reaping the benefits when he returns home before the new Flat turf season in March.

"There was a lot of bad publicity at home last year, and I'm just trying to get away from it all really and then start afresh, and this is a great way of doing it," Fallon says. "I feel really good riding here, and that's a feeling I didn't have for most of last summer. The confidence wasn't there, but that's been building up again just in the few weeks I've been here. I know how good I feel in myself right now, and I can't wait to get back [to Britain] because I know that's how I'll be, and I hadn't been feeling that for most of last year."

The Gulfstream Park schedule in January has "dark" days from Monday to Wednesday, allowing Fallon plenty of time to work on his golf handicap of "about 10". That American racing is track-based also means that he can even squeeze in a few holes between the morning exercise and the afternoon card.

"It doesn't feel like work when you're here," he says. "At the end of the day when you're riding in England, especially when you're doing the two meetings in the summer, you're drained. Here, you can go and hit a golf ball.

"The hardest thing at home isn't the racing, it's getting to the post. I remember Gary Stevens telling me that he found that the hardest thing too when he came over to England. You want to get them down to the gate at a slow pace, so you're always wrestling with them, especially the sprinters. Here you're looked after all the way, you get a pony guy to take you to the gate, and then he hands you on to the gate guy. All you have to do is get out of the gate and work your way back round again."

To date, the majority of his rides in America have been on grass, rather than the dirt on which the majority of the country's races take place. Nor is this a situation that Fallon is particularly keen to change.

"People have said to me that I don't just want to be known as a turf rider, but I'd be happy with that," he says. "I don't particularly like riding on the dirt, but then I don't think any jockey much does. The kickback cuts your head off, you come back in and you've got barks and bumps on you. I remember once I rode a hold-up horse in the Breeders' Cup Sprint, so you can imagine how fast they were going in front, and the dirt was coming back at you like snowballs.

"I said to Corey Nakatani afterwards, how do you do this every day, and he said, I ride the speed. There's a lot of that here, people just trying to ride the speed horses, and I'd hate to have to go to work every day and face that kickback."

A realistic ambition for the long-term, though, is "to be the best turf rider around over here", though it will be at least a year, and possibly more, before Fallon devotes himself to the States full-time.

"There's more to it on the grass," he says. "The dirt has less tactics, they jump and the speed horse usually wins, or whoever breaks well. On the grass it doesn't work like that, it's a lot more about using your head, being in the right place at the right time and knowing when that is. I've been beaten on a couple here that I should have won on because I wasn't where I wanted to be when I wanted to go, but now I know where the mistakes were and I won't make them again."

He is sharp and motivated, relaxed and confident. If Fallon can maintain this Florida glow when he returns to Britain, he will be a jockey to dismiss at your peril.

"I'm just learning, learning all the time," he says. "All the best jockeys are out here, Edgar Prado, Jerry Bailey, Jose Santos. Look at Prado, he always seems to be first out of the gate. The only way I can ever match that is to be in there alongside him, practising again and again."

Fallon, interestingly, expects the fine-tuning of his style to be particularly evident on all-weather tracks like Lingfield and Wolverhampton when he finally returns home. For the moment, though, it is the American punters who have latched on to his confident mood.

His latest winner at Gulfstream, a well-backed favourite trained by leading handler Dale Romans, saw jubilant backers yelling "You're the man, Fallon" as he returned to unsaddle.

"It's just a great feeling to be here and riding winners," he says. "Back in England, you've got Panorama sticking a microphone in my face and telling me that I shouldn't be riding. You come here and they tell you that you're the best in the world. Where would you rather be?"

Riding to win Stateside

Tactics


Many a foreign jockey has come a cropper in America. Tactics are vital around the uniformly tight, oval tracks as Fallon explains:

"You're thinking all the time when you're over here. You can't just float around like you can at home some of the time. At home, you get used to jockeys doing the same things in a race, and trainers who like their horses ridden in a certain way. Over here, you can't be so sure who's going to do what, and when you find yourself doing things a different way and making it work, you're really proving something to yourself."

Race starts

A swift exit from the stalls is all-important and Irish trainer Aidan O'Brien has come in for plenty of criticism for not preparing his horses and jockeys for the quickfire starts in the States.

"When they jump [the start] here, they jump and go forward, when in our races you'll often be unsure about the pace and so they jump and tend to drop in behind. So you have to learn to do it their way, and the more times you do it, the better you get at it."

Switching leads

For a jockey working the American tracks his ability to switch his horse's 'lead' leg during races can mean the difference between defeat and victory.

"Switching leads [a horse's leading leg] is so important. Here, you need to leave the gate on a right lead and get them on that down the back stretch, then get on to a left lead for the turn, and back onto the right for the finish. If you get it just right, you'll find a length by doing it. In races as competitive as these, it can make all the difference.


http://sport.guardian.co.uk/horseracing/comment/0,10148,1392645,00.html

[Niko]

I like his comments on switching leads and grass racing tactics. Sometimes the riders don't make a difference but I still like it when the good ones are on my horse at a price

[AQUEBUCKS]

Ron Anderson was told by Bailey to drop Fallon, he has someone else now, but don't know who.

Aquebucks

[Valuist]

That would not surprise me; I think Fallon won with 4 of his first 13-14 mounts but has really struggled in recent weeks.

[jfdinneen]

Kieran Fallon has left Florida and returned home on Monday.

Is it merely a coincidence that his sudden departure from Gulfstream is on the same weekend he shortened to 2/1 favorite to be the next stable jockey at Ballydoyle?

Best wishes,

John

[jfdinneen]

"KIEREN FALLON landed the hottest riding job in racing on Friday night when appointed as retained jockey... A brief statement emerged confirming what the betting market had been shouting from late Friday evening, that Fallon had been named as successor to Jamie Spencer at Ballydoyle..." [Racing Post]

Best wishes,

John