Fallon: 'Sir Michael and I have been very, very lucky together'

Kieren Fallon spoke yesterday of his happiness in renewing links with Sir Michael Stoute. The six-times champion jockey, who is suspended for 18 months after failing a drugs test in France last summer, hopes that his involvement in the yard will serve him well when he begins to train in his own right.

As revealed in The Independent yesterday, Stoute and Fallon met on Tuesday and discussed his return to the yard where he was retained from 1999 to 2004. It was in that year that Fallon was arrested on race-fixing charges. He protested his innocence throughout and at the end of last year an Old Bailey judge decided he had no case to answer.

"We have been very, very lucky together," Fallon said. "I thought riding out at his yard would just get me back into the game and give me the feeling again, because the last three and half years have been a nightmare. I will be around good horses, I know how he works and I really enjoy riding out for him. I just want to go back enjoying it again. If you don't enjoy it, you won't be successful. Being at the yard will help me and hopefully I'll be able to help him."

Fallon confirmed he had turned down offers to start training at once. "I've been thinking about it in the last week, and just didn't think I was ready," he said.