Champion jockey Kieren Fallon today claimed the Jockey Club have handed his crown to Richard Quinn.
Fallon, whose shoulder injury has scuppered his defence of a title he has won for each of the last three seasons, reckons a 10-day ban handed out by the disciplinary committee has cost Pat Eddery a 12th riders' crown.
And he believes the penalty, imposed for overuse of the whip on Kalanisi in last Saturday's Coral-Eclipse Stakes, was unfair.
'I think it's wrong that jockeys get so heavily penalised,' Fallon told the Victor Chandler International website.
'Racehorses are given the best of everything and all they are asked to do is perform on the given day and sometimes the whip is needed.
'I've been hit with a whip on my arms quite a few times in tight finishes and I've never felt it. Even though there's a mark and a lump you still don't feel it after the adrenaline has stopped flowing.
'Kalanisi responded every time Pat asked him and when he put his whip down he thought he'd done enough.'
Quinn is evens favourite for the riders' title with Victor Chandler, who quote Kevin Darley at 5-4 and Eddery the 4-1 outsider of three.
'I know how much Pat wanted to win his title back but he can't do it now because there's a double whammy for him to overcome,' Fallon said.
'He's losing the rides with trainer John Dunlop and Richard Quinn will pick them up.
'Quinn is a certainty to win his first jockeys' title. He'll get a few of my rides from Sir Michael Stoute and when it comes to the big meetings he'll have a very big advantage over Kevin Darley.
'Kevin is riding really well but because he's high profile now he'll be at the big meetings in the south instead of staying in the north, where he gets a full card of fancied rides.'
Fallon revealed that despite a new course of painkillers he is still in continual discomfort.
The frustration of watching racing from the sidelines does not help.
'It drives me mad when I'm watching racing and see horses winning that I should be riding - it's even worse when they get beat and should have won,' he said.
Fallon is resigned to missing out on another winner as St James's Palace Stakes third Medicean bids to justify favouritism in tomorrow's John Smith's Cup at York.
'After his third to Giant's Causeway at Royal Ascot he would be a penalty kick with 8st 10lb,' he said.
'The move up from a mile to 10 furlongs is what he wants.'
