Kieren Fallon drug test the latest blow to his career
Just 24 hours after walking from court, cleared of race-fixing charges, six-time champion jockey Kieren Fallon career was thrown back into chaos.
A second failed drugs test was confirmed in France last weekend. Cocaine and a metabolite of the drug were detected in his test result.
The 42-year-old is waiting to receive the results of the B sample from a laboratory after being informed of the positive test.
The positive test came after he rode Myboycharlie in the Prix Morny at Deauville on August 19.
But racing’s insiders have backed Fallon to make a comeback from this adversity, as he has done so many times in his career.
Pivotal moments in Fallon’s career
- 1994 – banned for six months for dragging Stuart Webster from his horse at Beverley
- 2000 – suffers career-threatening shoulder injury at Royal Ascot and misses the rest of the season
- 2003 – he enters a rehabilitation clinic with alcohol problem
- 2004 – banned for three weeks after easing prematurely and being beaten on Ballinger Ridge at Lingfield.
- 2007 – the 11-week trial over the conspiracy to defraud Betfair customers ended with Mr Justice Forbes directing the jury to find the six defendants not guilty.
See this week’s H&H for more comment on the future for Fallon.
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A self-confessed newshound, farmer’s daughter and journalist of many years' experience, Charlotte worked on regional papers before joining H&H in 2007. A regular rider, she visited Ireland in 2010 to investigate the fate of Irish horses through the recession, to much acclaim, and reported from the FEI General Assembly in Rio de Janeiro in 2011. She left Horse & Hound in March 2013.