Frankie is flying as Enable seals a slice of history Stateside
ON his 100th mount at the Breeders’ Cup Frankie Dettori wrote a little piece of racing history at Churchill Downs last night with an emotional victory on Enable in the Breeders’ Cup Turf.
Eight horses had previously tried and failed to land a race at the meeting regarded as the world championships of racing in the same season they have won the Prix de L’Arc de Triomphe at Longchamp.
All had failed including two — Sakhee and Golden Horn — ridden by the 47-year-old Italian.
But on the John Gosden-trained filly that Dettori has joked he loves more than his wife Catherine, the jockey finally ended the Arc winners’ hoodoo with a battling win from Aidan O’Brien’s Magical after a two-horse duel up the home straight.
Dettori regards Enable as the best filly he has ever ridden and her record now nudges her up the lists of racing greats.
As well as yesterday’s win in the $4m Turf, the daughter of Nathaniel has won two Arcs and also numbers the King George and the English and Irish Oaks among her seven Group One wins.
Gosden said: ‘It was a big ask for the filly aftter a difficult year. She didn’t quite come in the form whe would have come last year but she has done it. It was a race.
‘It was a wonderful stretch run between two great fillies.’
Dettori, who earlier triumphed in the Breeders’ Cup Mile on Sir Michael Stoute’s Expert Eye, has now ridden 14 Breeders’ Cup winners. He is the most successful European jockey in the 35 years of this meeting.
The main opposition to Enable may have been European horses that she has beaten before but the scale of this victory should not be downplayed.
This has been an injury-disrupted season for her. She had only had two previous races. Coping with transatlantic travel, the tight track and unusually soft ground for a US course, which had made her draw in stall two not the advantage it seemed, were all hurdles to overcome.
Earlier victory had not looked likely as Expect Eye paddled in the turf early in the home straight and Dettori admitted: ‘He broke well and then he took a false step and lost his position. I had to go for Plan B. I did not want to be that far back.
‘In the straight I asked him to pick up and the response was not there. For 100 metres I thought I would be a good fifth, but then he found his rhythm and I could see the leaders stopping.
‘He sprinted home and I went from despair to joy in space of 100 yards.’
This was Dettori’s second win in the Mile. The other one was his first ever Breeders’ Cup success with Barathea in 1994.
Expert Eye, a one-time Classic hope when a spectacular winner as a two-year-old, has struggled to deliver the big win but he has it now after ultimately holding off runner-up Catapult.
It was a eighth Breeders’ Cup win for Stoute and a first in the Mile Europe had won three races going into the feature Classic with the victory Charlie Appleby’s Godolphin-owned Line Of Duty in Friday’s Juvenile Turf.
The Breeders’ Cup Classic stayed in American hands as Accelerate landed the $6m Dirt prize. Thunder Snow fared best of the European brigade in third.