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The Championships should lure more jockeys like Fallon

English racehorse Yeats ridden by Kieren Fallon. (AAP Image/Julian Smith)
Expert
6th March, 2014
17

The news that filtered through this week that legendary Irish jockey Kieren Fallon will base himself in Sydney for much of the next few weeks is a terrific endorsement for Australian racing.

It also bodes well for The Championships, which runs in April.

Fallon is a terrific jockey who has had more than his fair share of controversy throughout the years.

He’s been stable jockey to three of the world’s best trainers – the late Sir Henry Cecil, Sir Michael Stoute and the Coolmore-backed Aidan O’Brien.

With backing from those powerful stables he was able to win six English jockey championships.

He had a short stint in Australia during the spring of 2006.

While his only feature success in that period was aboard California Dane in the Moir Stakes on Cox Plate day at Moonee Valley, he rode Aqua D’Amore to fourth in the Cox Plate and Yeats to seventh in the Melbourne Cup.

However, wherever he goes, controversy is not far behind.

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In 2006, Fallon was charged with conspiring to defraud Betfair – a fancy term for alleging he fixed races. The charges were dropped in 2007 because of a lack of evidence, but the stigma stuck for a while.

Around the same time, he received two bans in quick succession for testing positive to banned substances. The second ban was for a whopping 18 months, which meant he was on the sidelines from January 2008 until September 2009.

Nevertheless, he quickly found form again and he continues to ride plenty of winners.

It’s a coup for Australia that such a talented jockey wants to ride in Sydney for the autumn, but it is just one step in the right direction. We should be encouraging plenty of overseas jockeys to come to Sydney, even if just for the two meetings of The Championships.

It was disgraceful recently when Douglas Whyte – a winner of the past 13 jockey premierships in Hong Kong – could not get more than one ride at the Blue Diamond Stakes meeting at Caulfield.

That was on Wez Hunter-trained Malaguerra, among the outsiders for the feature race. In the end, it is no surprise that he pulled the pin.

Even if The Championships is light on international runners, why not encourage the world’s best jockeys to come and have a ride?

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Get the likes of Christophe Soumillon, Frankie Dettori, Joao Moreira, Yutake Take and Ryan Moore to ride alongside the likes of Damien Oliver, Hugh Bowman, Tommy Berry, Nash Rawiller, Jimmy Cassidy, Kerrin McEvoy and James McDonald.

Then it may feel like a real championship meeting of horse and rider.

I can already hear the gasps of horror from those pesky parochial Australians who think that the only beneficiaries of the best rides should be Australian jockeys.

But you don’t see Dubai sticking with locals for the World Cup meeting. You don’t see Hong Kong sticking with locals for their December card.

This is The Championships – make it the best of the best, no matter where they are from.

Fallon is just the start.

Big Philou was at the centre of one of racing’s biggest scandals when he was poisoned and scratched minutes before the 1969 Melbourne Cup as a heavy favourite. He joins The Roar more than four decades later to give his take on racing and maybe create some more controversy.

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