One of the best
I’m done’. He wouldn’t tell anybody why. And once he made up his mind about something, that was it.”
June says that “the demons” really started from 2008 and Davies snorts when I ask what support there was following Beijing. Or, indeed, once he had retired and was transitioning from life as an elite athlete. “You’re joking?” he says. “These players give their soul to judo and then all of a sudden, boom, next man in. You hear it from the athletes in other sports. What is the next pathway? It used to be about the medal in sport. Now it is about the funding first.”
British Judo said yesterday that Fallon received medical support during his career, as well as specialist care during the troubled stages of his life, but that lessons had been learnt and much had changed in the 12 years since Beijing as mental health issues became less stigmatised.
Britain’s only other two male world champions: Adams and Graeme Randall, were made MBES following their triumphs but there would be no accolades for Fallon.
June repeatedly says that Fallon was “thrown to the kerb”. He even had the tattoo of the Olympic rings covered in 2018. Fallon would coach wherever possible and visit schools or deliver “masterclasses” across the continent where he was idolised. “He had to scrimp and save to make ends meet,” Davies says. The birth of a son brought new purpose. Senior coaching jobs in Austria and then with the Welsh Judo Association followed but what June calls “a black hole” became ever deeper. He sought help for depression in 2017.
“He didn’t want people to know, even those close to him,” June says. “When Craig got depressed he couldn’t get out of bed. He
One of Britain’s most accomplished judokas, Craig Fallon won gold at the World Championships in 2005, following Neil Adams (1981) and Graeme Randall (1999) as the only British men to win a world title. It followed his silver medal in the same -60kg class two years earlier.
The highlight of his career came when he won gold in the European Championships in 2006, making him only the second Briton, along with Adams, to hold both titles at the same time.
Fallon finished seventh at the Beijing Olympics in 2008, before retiring in 2011 to move into coaching. He was inducted into the Wolverhampton Sporting Hall of Fame in 2012 and, after coaching in Austria, became the head of coaching at the Welsh Judo Association in 2019. couldn’t move. As the years went by, it was getting harder and harder. That big, black hole took him. He was too far in.”
The tragic facts of what happened on Sunday, July 14 2019, were presented at Fallon’s inquest in November. Shropshire coroner John Ellery reported that Fallon had dropped his six-year-old son off earlier in the day and sent a series of messages to his partner, Rebecca Dunning, of which the last was at 6.05pm. His body was then found shortly after 5am the following morning. Fallon had sent a letter to Rebecca, with whom he had been living since 2012, in which he said “remember this was my choice”.
Fallon also conveyed hope that others could be helped. “Whether it’s sport or something I’ve always had I don’t know,” he wrote. “But depression is very much a problem in sport. Maybe you can help, you’ve seen and lived with it for years and others need help.” June and Davies also tell me about one particular person Fallon advised by telling him to follow simple steps for well-being. “He’d say, ‘Go for a run, eat well, drink water, sleep and it will shape your mind’. It helped this person and he was really grateful,” says June. “I think his legacy would be to not suffer in silence, for help to be there and to help others. That’s why we are here.”
As June then gets up to straighten the photographs, she tells me about the necklace she always wears with the words “mum and son” inscribed on one side and “June and Craig” on the other.
She also shows me some of Fallon’s paintings. One is of a lion’s head and another depicts a woman in black. “When he died, letters came from around the world – Australia, Belgium, Russia, Austria, France – and were all about what a nice gentleman he was and how much time he always had to help children in judo,” she says. “It’s a tragedy, but the suffering stopped. His suffering stopped. I’m just going day by day. What happened will never go, but I’m hoping nobody else has to go through it. I want to get the awareness out.”
Davies also shows me a band on his wrist that was given to him by the Austrian club where Fallon coached and which says: “The legend will never die”.
As we drive back to the station, Davies says that he thinks about Fallon constantly but that this should be the last time he talks publicly about him. Davies is the sort of volunteer who sustains sport in this country and, when I ask if he is still teaching judo, he gets excited about one of the members of the University of Wolverhampton’s team. That coaching buzz remains, even if there is then a pause before he adds: “But I know that there will never be another like Craig.”