By the Times Chief Sports Writer Simon Barnes
Jockeys are a difficult bunch. It’s a mixture of short man’s chippiness and the demands of the job, a series of brusque, even brutal, wham-bam relationships with an endless series of partners. Thus we have the depression of Fred Archer, the pathological meanness of Lester Piggott, Willie Carson’s outbreaks of spitefulness, and even Frankie Dettori has a dark side.
But Kieren Fallon is different. I have had long chats with him on two or three occasions and each time I walked away thinking: “What a nice guy. If only they were all like that.” Fallon’s CV speaks of someone you would cross the M25 to avoid, but the man himself is quite different.
All the same, there was the time when he pulled a rival jockey off his horse — brilliant, in a way, because a racing saddle and an oated-up thoroughbred do not make a stable platform for judo. Whatever else Fallon may be, he is not so much a magnet for trouble as a black hole. Incomprehensible forces of gravitation tug every possible aspect of strife and destruction towards him. And so, even as his corruption trial collapses, we hear that he has failed a drugs test for cocaine, a matter still in the arena of the unproven as we await the findings for the B sample.
And yet the man I met was a champion jockey filled with humility, lost in admiration for Dettori’s style, expressing a touching eagerness to improve. You can see his hidden nature in the way he rides, in the impulsive, nanosecond seizing of a gap. But for the rest — well, he has some of the most well-mannered demons you could possibly wish to be introduced to. One of the strangest men I’ve ever met.
As reports in different newspapers claim that José Mourinho has (a) signed up as England’s next head coach and (b) performed an about-turn and joined Barcelona, the fact to bear in mind is that neither scenario would come as the least surprise. Mourinho obeys neither laws nor conventions. He pleases himself and if he gets the England job, he will do it for himself alone.
I take my hat (and shirt) off to Giggs
I remember attending a football match in which opposition supporters sang of their hatred for Ryan Giggs. Not for the first or the last time, I was bemused by a football crowd. How can anyone hate Ryan Giggs? He’s another of those athletes who lift the heart.
He has just scored his 100th league goal for Manchester United, so it’s a nice moment to applaud him as he lifts his bat, and to muse on the idiosyncratic gallop – at full pace, he is recognisable from half a mile away – and that expression, seen far too often, alas, of profound and innocent bewilderment because the ball that he has struck has failed to find the goal.
But there was that really rather good one he scored against Arsenal in the FA Cup semi-final of 1999. Has there been a better or a more influential goal in club football?
Brutal and beautiful, the joy of Jayasuriya
Sanath Jayasuriya retired from Test cricket after playing a typically explosive role in the dispatch of England in the first match of the Test series in Kandy.
He has been a joy to watch throughout his career, but he peaked early. It was 11 years ago when he set Sri Lanka on the path to their extraordinary victory in the World Cup.
He did this because he was able to leave fear hanging up on his peg in the dressing-room. When he went out to bat, he did so without thought of failure.
In the World Cup of 1996, played on the flat wickets of the subcontinent, Jayasuriya came out and flayed anything that came near him. It was unprecedented and terrifying, batting so clearly intimidatory that you thought that there should be a law against it.
In that World Cup he and his opening partner, Romesh Kaluwitharana, gave their team 15-over starts of 90 against Zimbabwe, 117 against India (42 in the first three overs), 123 against Kenya and 121 against England and it led to the most joyous victory seen in the World Cup.
That is Jayasuriya, a man of outrageous cricketing joys. Bowlers may disagree.
Hatton cannot save boxing
The length of time we are required to get excited before a big boxing match is now of Christmas-like proportions and it’s for the same reason, that is to say, money. As the prebout blather for the Hatton-Mayweather contest reached perihelion, I was asked why I have become quieter. Have I changed my views about the evils of boxing?
Not in the least. I still don’t believe that a contest in which the winning contestant is generally the one who causes more permanent brain damage to his opponent than he receives is an appropriate entertainment for the 21st century. But never mind. Let it go.
I have left my campaign for the abolition of boxing in the hands of boxing itself and it is doing a fine job. The fuss surrounding the Hatton bout is quite exceptional. Be assured, this is not the start of a revival, but a continuation of the decline.
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