It was supposedly the ancient Egyptians who first came up with the idea of cats being possessed of nine lives but even the most resilient feline would be hard pressed to match the survival rate of Kieren Fallon.

The Irishman is nicknamed “the Assassin” for his cold-eyed calm when riding in the big races but he could be forgiven for thinking that he was the one with a target pinned to his back in recent years. Controversy has not so much dogged him as walked three steps ahead, simply waiting to open the door to another crisis.

Many of us think that we have been taken to the gates of Hell after a tough day at the office, but Fallon has stood there, opened those gates and taken a long look inside. Last night, in an interview with BBC’s television’s Inside Sport the former champion jockey took viewers on whistle-stop tour of a life that could have come straight off the pages of a Dick Francis Thriller.

The six-month suspension he received from the Jockey Club, for pulling another jockey off his horse after a race, in 1994, and his part in the libel case in which it was claimed that he had “stopped” a horse called Top Cees were simply the hors d’oeuvre to the main courses that have kept the media well fed for the last few years.

Three months ago Fallon returned from an 18-month world-wide suspension for drug use which, while it might not quite be upsides Lazarus in the list of all-time comebacks, marked what is likely to be one of the final chapters of his riding career – one way or another. 

When the news of the positive test – his second – broke just 24 hours after he had been cleared by an Old Bailey judge of any part in race-fixing allegations, in December 2007, there was a strong view within the sport that Fallon was finished. However, he seems to take an infusion of determination when confounding his critics, some of whom were penning obituaries for his career ten years ago.

Then it was his dramatic sacking by Henry Cecil – after a partnership that had yielded five classic winners – on the first day of Glorious Goodwood in 1999 for what was termed at the time “personal reasons”. Very personal indeed as Fallon recalled: “Natalie Cecil [the trainer’s now ex-wife] had said that she’d had an affair with a top jockey – but never named him. And I think everyone presumed it was me at the time. She left Newmarket and I was left without a job.”

It was assumed that Fallon would retreat to the northern circuit where he had forged his early reputation for both riding winners and finding trouble. Instead he moved just a mile from Cecil’s Newmarket yard to ride for Sir Michael Stoute. “We’ve been very, very lucky together,” Fallon said. “The amount of good horses he had, the cream – and when I needed it most.”

Again there was the succession of peaks that Fallon conquered with an undiminished zest but the landscape came with its fair share of troughs – a career-threatening arm injury in 2000 and entering rehab after admitting problems with alcohol in 2003. “I did start drinking a lot,” he explained. “Racing is a social thing – everything revolves around drinking whether you win or whether you lose. It was just something I used to do a lot. It never affected my riding.

“If I’d ended in the gutter, and then you know can’t drink again, it would’ve been the best thing that could have happened to me. It wasn’t until a friend pulled me aside and said ‘look how well you do – can you imagine who well you’d do if your body was better? If your mind was clearer?’.”

Instead of the gutter, Fallon found himself in what should have been the ultimate outlet for his prodigious talents when he switched to Aidan O’Brien’s yard for the 2005 season. That partnership survived both Fallon’s first six-month ban from the French racing authorities for a positive drugs test and the negative that came with the three-year police investigation and subsequent court case before foundering on the rocks of Fallon’s ongoing addiction problems.

Looking back on a period that was tumultuous even by the standards of a man who has led a life at near gale-force intensity he explained why drugs had taken a hold of him. “Obviously when things aren’t going well, my life was spiralling out of control,” he said. “Every second week I was taking trips to England to my barristers. We couldn’t see an end to it, it went on year after year, and you get to the stage you don’t really care anymore.”

The Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe will stand as a testimony to Fallon’s fortitude, blocking out the news of his second positive test and his court appearance the next day, to drive Dylan Thomas to a dramatic victory but the smile was really only skin-deep this time. “The Old Bailey case was the only thing that was in my head for the last couple of years,” he said. “I couldn’t even sleep at night – you’d sleep for 10 minutes and wake up every other hour. We were looking at six to 10 years. The biggest worry, even though I knew I had done nothing wrong, if any of the others had I was in there with them. And that was my biggest worry.”

A worry that Fallon expressed in the interview was about the level of drug use within the racing community in Newmarket. This was not quite so explosive a comment as some in the media have suggested. Fallon pointed out that he was not referring so much to jockeys, who are regularly tested, but others such as stable staff which means that a town with a population of 15,000 (2001 Census) has a higher-than-normal ratio of young people who are more likely to be susceptible to drug use. 

“I’ve done something and I’m all right now. Newmarket has the highest rate for its population in any town in England.”

Fallon speaks as one who has salvaged his life and now, perhaps, viewing it through a new perspective because at 44 he can probably see a feint outline on his career horizon. It is the end of the line and he desperately wants the remaining miles of the journey to be the best that he has travelled, using the partnership between Michael Kinane and Sea The Stars as his defining template.

“I know now that I have to be stronger if I’m to get away from the circle of people that bring you down, and move on,” he explained. “I don’t know how many years I have left but I’ll be working hard to do things right.

“Of course you’re ashamed of the things you’ve done wrong. It eats away at you. And it builds up inside you, and you feel embarrassed. You walk back into the weighing room after not being there for a long time and you think ‘Jesus Christ’. You’re trying to avoid people, it’s embarrassing but it won’t happen again. “

Whichever life he is up to now Fallon seems intent on making it count.

Paul Wheeler