‘No-one knew how good she was - but all the owners and quite a few of my friends did. They absolutely smashed into her’

No matter how relaxed Kieren Fallon looks on his sofa, he was and remains infinitely more comfortable on a horse.

These days it all happens on the gallops. There are no races to win, titles to chase or furores to fight. Eight years have passed since Britain's six-time champion jockey retired yet he continues to jump in the car each morning and travel to Moulton Paddocks, energised and enthused by the prospect of riding thoroughbreds. Fallon achieved fame and glory as one of the sport's leading lights but the reason he did the job, the reason he loved the job, was always the horses. That love has never dulled.

The task at hand in the sitting room of his home on the outskirts of Newmarket is to talk about the horses who have mattered most to a 59-year-old still active in racing through his work for Charlie Appleby. During Fallon's long period of pomp, he rode as number one to Henry Cecil, Michael Stoute and Aidan O'Brien. He won 16 British Classics – including the Derby on three occasions – two Arcs and posted five double centuries. Strewn through the success was a series of scandals. A more positive constant was Fallon's affinity for horses, imbued in him long before he arrived at Kevin Prendergast's Curragh base in hobnail boots, just a few days shy of his 18th birthday.