Frankie Dettori: Magician of the saddle

The life of a jockey is an attritional one, and star apprentices come and go as regularly as champion two-year-olds. Just as most Dewhurst Stakes winners aren’t Frankel, it takes a special champion apprentice not merely to graduate to champion jockey, but still to be dominating as the Big Five-Oh looms.

Sustained excellence over an extended period is what marks out the true greats in any field.

This year’s Royal Ascot, which Frankie Dettori ended as leading jockey once again with a total of seven winners (supplied by five different trainers) under his belt, has left us in no doubt that the world’s most famous jockey, who will turn 50 next year, occupies a very special place in the pantheon.

Destined to be a jockey

Frankie Dettori’s father Gianfranco was a multiple champion jockey in Italy, riding many big winners for Luca Cumani’s father Sergio. When Luca started training in Newmarket in 1976, many of his owners were Italians, and Gianfranco often flew over from Italy to ride the horses.

He was on board Luca’s first winner (the subsequent NZ-based stallion Three Legs (GB) (Petingo {GB}) in the G3 Duke Of York S. at York in May 1976) and rode Classic place-getters for him in each of his first two years training. When Gianfranco’s son Lanfranco was aged 14, he sent the boy over to England (notwithstanding that he didn’t speak a word of English) to learn his trade in Cumani’s stable.

Aged 15, Lanfranco Dettori (who had been dubbed ‘Frankie’ by his colleagues in Cumani’s Bedford House Stables, as that was easier for anglophones to get their tongues around) used to fly back to Italy to ride in races. He became eligible for a British apprentice’s license on turning 16 in December 1976, and began race-riding in England the following spring. (There was no Flat racing in the winter in those days). He was immediately successful.

Britain's Champion Apprentice

Frankie Dettori was still only aged 18 when crowned Britain’s Champion Apprentice of 1989. He ended that season with 71 winners, the highest total posted by an apprentice since Pat Eddery had claimed the apprentices’ crown with the same tally in 1971. The following year he took the transition from champion apprentice to big-race jockey in his stride.

At Ascot’s September Meeting, then dubbed ‘The Festival of British Racing’ and trumpeted as a special occasion in the same way that its October fixture is currently known as ‘QIPCO British Champions’ Day’, he rode two Group 1 winners on the same afternoon, both trained by Cumani: Gerald Leigh’s Markofdistinction (GB) (Known Fact {USA}) in the G1 Queen Elizabeth II S. and Sheikh Mohammed’s Shamshir (GB) (Kris {GB}) in the G1 Brent Walker Fillies’ Mile S. (The same day six years later, incidentally, saw him complete his ‘Magnificent Seven’, riding all seven winners on this Group 1 race-day at the racecourse which has become most synonymous with Frankie’s flair).

Frankie Dettori was soon riding winners, and plenty of them, for a wide range of trainers. He guided the Lord Huntingdon-trained Drum Taps (USA) (Dixieland Band {USA}) to victory in the G1 Ascot Gold Cup in both 1992 and ’93 before being in the saddle when the horse became the first British-trained runner in the G1 Melbourne Cup in November 1993, finishing fifth behind the Irish trail-blazer Vintage Crop (GB) (Rousillon {USA}). The following year he had an even bigger international assignment.

Michael Roberts, at the time the retained jockey for Sheikh Mohammed, had been on board Barathea (Ire) (Sadler’s Wells {USA}) when the Cumani-trained colt had won the 1993 G1 Irish 2,000 Guineas; and Mick Kinane had been riding him through the summer of 1994.

Frankie Dettori, though, was given the call-up that autumn when Barathea was sent over to America to run in the G1 Breeders’ Cup Mile at Churchill Downs, notwithstanding that he hadn’t ridden the horse in a race since he was a two-year-old and still running for his breeder Gerald Leigh. Sent off at double-figure odds, Barathea, brilliantly ridden, won by three lengths, prompting his rider to celebrate in the style which has subsequently become his trademark: he performed his first flying dismount.

Dettori had spent time riding trackwork in California when Cumani used to send him over there in the winters during his apprenticeship and, at a time when riding techniques on the two sides of the Atlantic were very different, he had broken the mould by creating his own ‘mid-Atlantic’ style.

He based much of his methods on those of the great American jockey Angel Cordero (whom he had first come across when Cordero made a flying visit to Newmarket in 1985 to win the G1 Cheveley Park S. on the Luca Cumani-trained Embla (GB) (Dominiion {GB}) at a time when the young Dettori was the most junior employee in Bedford House).

All told, the Breeders’ Cup win on Barathea was very special indeed, a defining moment in the burgeoning career of his 23-year-old jockey. Equally defining was Dettori’s first jockeys’ premiership that year when he ended the campaign with 233 wins on the board, the highest total posted by a jockey in Britain since 26-time champion Sir Gordon Richards had ridden 261 in 1949.

Hong Kong calling

It was plain that Frankie Dettori was an outstanding talent who, still in the first half of his 20s, had already won more races and more big races than most good jockeys do in a lifetime. However, whether race-riding was going to be the main component of his life was looking doubtful.

To Cumani’s consternation, in 1993 Dettori had accepted the offer of a two-year contract to ride in Hong Kong. His reasoning that he could make more money there than in the UK left most on-lookers baffled: riding full-time in Hong Kong was deemed to be an option only for leading British jockeys if they were thinking of easing themselves into semi-retirement and looking to top up their pension funds.

Even to this day, no jockey has abandoned a position in the upper echelons of the British ranks to ride in Hong Kong on anything other than a short-term, off-season contract. That Dettori was prepared to make the move seemed to put a big question mark over his motivation, a question mark which was reinforced in many people’s minds when he received a police caution for possession of a small amount of cocaine shortly before his job in Hong Kong (which was consequently annulled) was due to start.

To recover from this setback was not easy, but Dettori managed it, winning his first two jockeys’ premierships in 1994 and ’95. However, after that second championship he announced that the gruelling, day-in-day-out grind to ride more winners than anyone else was not for him, and that he would prefer to keep himself fresh for the big days.

Again, this was anathema to the traditional British mindset which dictated that being the best jockey and wanting to ride the most winners were one and the same.

The boy in blue

By now Dettori was the jockey of choice for Sheikh Mohammed’s nascent Godolphin operation, whose initial elitist modus operandi of preferring quality over quantity matched Dettori’s mindset perfectly.

This long-lasting link went on to provide him with a regular flow of triumphs in many of the world’s biggest races, starting with the first of his 17 (so far) British Classic victories on Balanchine (USA) (Storm Bird {USA}) in the G1 Oaks at Epsom in 1994. He thus settled into the relatively comfortable lifestyle of a big-race jockey, while expanding his business interests and making it plain that there was no way he would be riding beyond the age of 40.

However, times change and so do people. One century ended and another began, and Dettori began to find that his previously-diminished appetite for the daily grind was restored enough for him to become Champion Jockey again in 2004. His 40th birthday came and went in 2010, and it was clear that it had now dawned on him just how much he loved race-riding.

Obviously he loved taking centre stage (who wouldn’t?) and would miss being in the spotlight, but what he had finally realised was something which everyone else had known all along: above all else, above the showmanship, the adulation, the glamour and the money, he was first and foremost a horseman. And horsemen don’t just exit stage left to become something else; not while they have any choice in the matter, anyway.

Frankie Dettori still has plenty of choice in the matter because he currently has as many good horses to ride as he has ever had. When things went a bit quiet for him early in his career after the Hong Kong job fell through, John Gosden was at the head of the queue to support him.

After Godolphin eventually looked as if it was beginning to move him quietly to the side-lines by adding Silvestre De Sousa and Mikael Barzalona to its riding roster in 2012, Dettori tried to fill the void by taking a retainer with Al Shaqab Racing. And when that link-up proved not to be the start of the beautiful friendship which had seemed likely at the time, Gosden renewed the old ties, snapping him up after his stable jockey William Buick (18 years Dettori’s junior) had joined the Godolphin fold.

Formerly dead-set on retiring no later than 40, Frankie Dettori reached and passed 45 without missing a beat. He will turn 50 at the end of next year, and it would be a major surprise if he isn’t still riding in 2021. And then? Will he still be riding at 55? You wouldn’t bet against it.

For as long as John Gosden is able to supply him with mounts of the quality of Golden Horn (GB) (Cape Cross {Ire}), Cracksman (GB) (Frankel {GB}), Enable (GB) (Nathaniel {Ire}), Stradivarius (Ire) (Sea The Stars {Ire}) and Too Darn Hot (GB) (Dubawi {Ire}); while there are still Derbys and Prix de l’Arc de Triomphes and Breeders’ Cups to be won, and Royal Ascot winners to be ridden, he’ll be there.

Riding with all the elan which he showed in his 20s but with an extra dimension of experience thrown in, plus more basic love of the game than ever before, Frankie Dettori is showing no signs of being ready to abdicate from his position as the king of the world’s weighing rooms. Seemingly in the blink of an eye, the Boy Wonder has become the Grand Old Man, but this magician of the saddle looks to have a few more tricks up his sleeve yet.