Dettori falls foul of Ascot’s trap by not keeping it simple
Thirty-nine years ago Willie Carson came to our school to talk to the Equestrian Society and he was asked: “What makes a top-class jockey?”
His answer was simple: “The best jockeys are the ones who make the least mistakes.”
Obviously there is a lot more to being a great jockey than that, but having spoken to Steve Cauthen, and watching Frankie Dettori endure a torrid time, was a reminder of what a devilishly difficult course the round track at Ascot is to ride.
Cauthen was famous for having a brilliant clock in his head. He knew exactly how fast he was going, so he could set a searching gallop and yet get his mount to the line just before the petrol ran out. And that allowed him to “keep it simple”.
Dettori was considered by trainer John Gosden to have “overcomplicated” it in the Ascot Gold Cup when beaten on the old boy Stradivarius. It was a fair criticism. On tracks with a longer straight, Dettori may have got away with losing his position midway through the race. But Ascot punishes jockeys who find themselves shuffled too far back as they climb the hill from Swinley Bottom when the pace is steady.
The Gold Cup turned into a “sprint” in the relatively short straight and Stradivarius’s old legs could not quicken up as well as the youngsters ahead of him. He also had a wall of horses in his path.
Dettori will have known that he was in trouble half a mile from the line. With a rider as good as Ryan Moore aboard Kyprios on his outside keeping his opponents boxed in against the rail, Dettori was in a trap and there was no escape. That is good race riding. In fact, Moore rode brilliantly all week and he showed just how cool he is after the Wokingham on Saturday when he said he was hoping the split did not open up too soon for his mount, Rohaan.
Moore never picked his stick up as he steered Rohaan through a last-second gap and had such a cheeky smile as he pulled up, as if to say: “I was never going to get beat, even though I left it late.”
Dettori’s week was a nightmare compared to Moore’s, but class is permanent and the Italian did not panic when Inspiral went to sleep on him during the early stages of the Coronation Stakes on Friday. It was Group One redemption for her rider.
While jockeys are not allowed to ride dangerously and cut across others, they are allowed to “shut the door on them” by blocking the quickest way home.
Former top jockey Johnny Murtagh was refreshingly blunt about Pat Dobbs’s failure aboard Lusail to shut the door on winner Coroebus and William Buick in Tuesday’s St James’s Palace Stakes.
In Dobbs’s defence, he needed to know he had clear water between his mount and Coroebus, who was coming up the rail, before he could move over and block his run. At the speed they are travelling, that is not always possible.
It would be a mistake, however, to think that a jockey whose mount finishes fast but does not hit the line in front has ridden a bad race.
Jamie Spencer gave Artorius a peach of a ride in the Platinum Jubilee Stakes on Saturday. Held up at the back, as the horse likes to be, Spencer threaded his way through the field but found the two Godolphin horses too good. He undoubtedly extracted every ounce of ability out of the horse but, like Moore on Rohaan, knew getting there too soon would not result in victory. That is racing.
It is the runners from Australia, Japan and the United States that give the Royal Ascot crowds such a unique thrill, and connections would not travel them such vast distances if they did not have total confidence in the racing surface.
This year, clerk of the course Chris Stickels had the track in perfect condition. There was no track bias up the wide straight, which is a great feat given it had to be watered every night with 4-7mm to counter the “evapotranspiration”.