Kieren Fallon makes surprise return to race-riding in Britain

http://www.theguardian.com/sport/2015/mar/08/kieren-fallon-surprise-return-race-riding-britain

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Kieren Fallon is preparing to have another go at Flat racing in Britain this season despite harbouring hopes that he might become a fixture of the sport in California. The six-times champion jockey is booked for two rides at Kempton on Wednesday and is expected to be aboard Tenor in the Winter Derby at Lingfield on Saturday.

“He’s looking forward to riding in the UK,” the jockey’s agent, Simon Dodds, said. “Seven or eight different trainers have offered him rides.”

The jockey turned 50 last month but is still booting home winners, including a 25-1 shot in a Group Three at Meydan on Saturday. It is less than a year since he landed the 2,000 Guineas at Newmarket on a 40-1 shot.

Fallon stunned British racing in October when announcing he would ride in the US through the winter and might not return. “I’d like to go back to California, which I intend doing in the next couple of weeks, just to try to get the buzz back again because things haven’t happened for me in the second half of this season,” he said at the time.

And, while he indicated he would enjoy extending his stay on the west coast of the US, he also pointed out that the number of high-profile jockeys already resident there would make it hard to get permanently established.

Dodds said Fallon was likely to return to Dubai for World Cup night at the end of the month. The jockey may return to California next winter.

This week’s Cheltenham Festival will be “the big test” of new starting procedures, the BHA has admitted after criticism of what occurred at the start of the Imperial Cup at Sandown on Saturday. The starter ruled the first attempt was a false start and therefore moved, as required, to a standing start.

In the event, several horses appeared to be disadvantaged by slow starts, including the Irish raider Wicklow Brave, who had suffered in exactly the same circumstances in Newbury’s Betfair Hurdle last month. The Welsh National also provoked ire over lost chances during the standing start. “We are generally satisfied with how they have been working,” said Jamie Stier, the BHA’s director of raceday operations. “No set of procedures are ever going to eradicate false starts entirely, so it is no great surprise that in the first year, as the rules have bedded in, that we have had an occasional blip, a couple in big-field handicaps.”

However, he noted that the new rules were developed “in partnership” with jump jockeys, as well as the management teams at Cheltenham and Aintree. “The jockeys will be briefed every day before racing to remind them of their responsibilities and we will be monitoring the way the rules are working.”

The new rules require horses to approach the tape no faster than “jig-jog” pace and a false start is called if some are moving faster, followed by a move to a standing start. Stier was asked why a second jig-jog start could not be attempted.

“Under the previous procedures, it proved difficult to get the riders to collectively retreat to a point, assemble and approach the start as one,” he said. “This, on several occasions, resulted in further failed starts or the field approaching the start at an increasingly faster pace, which nobody wanted and was often the subject of negative comment.

“This was exactly the sort of scenario everyone is keen to avoid. While believing it is preferential to have a start where the field is on the move, either walking or no faster than a jig-jog, if the first start is unsuccessful a subsequent standing start precludes another rushing of the tape.”