Daily Racing Form National Digital Edition
High-flying Dettori bids farewell to desert
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates – It either was 1988 or 1989 when Bob Baffert first laid eyes on Lanfranco “Frankie” Dettori.
“I saw him in the paddock there at Santa Anita one time,” Baffert said. “He was just jibberjabbering, talking to somebody. I was like, ‘Who’s that kid?’ ”
Thirty-five years have gone by since Baffert and Dettori crossed paths. Baffert recently turned 70, Dettori 52. The years have marched forward like a well-mannered set going out to train early on a crisp morning. Is time a line or a circle? Everything is coming back around.
Saturday at Meydan Racecourse, Dettori rides his final Dubai World Cup. His mount, Country Grammer, is trained by Baffert. Dettori piloted Country Grammer to victory a year ago in the $12 million World Cup, his fourth win in the race coming 22 years after his first, with a 16-year gap between wins No. 3 and 4. Looking on Saturday will be the ruler of Dubai, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al Maktoum, founder of Godolphin. Dettori was Godolphin’s contract rider for 18 years, winning three World Cups for Maktoum, the first in 2000 with the mighty Dubai Millennium.
Dettori got that job because he began riding Maktoum horses for the English trainer John Gosden in the early 1990s. Gosden made his own foray to Southern California. His last year training there before moving his career back home to England was 1988 – just when Dettori had come over. “Frankie did his time at Santa Anita, slipping in the back gate lying in the back of cars. He rode trackwork and learned a lot,” said Gosden.
When Dettori had lost Godolphin and fallen to a low point in his career, it was Gosden who picked him up in 2015 and wrote Dettori into one intense, final chapter of an epic life in racing. Dettori here Saturday night rides two horses for Gosden, Trawlerman in the Gold Cup, and Lord North, who goes for his third victory in the Dubai Turf.
“He’s, without a doubt, pound for pound the best jockey I’ve ever put on a horse,” said Gosden, among the best trainers of the last many decades. “And I’ve seen all the top jockeys.”
After going round and round ovals and down long straightaways, circling the globe from Milan to Santa Anita to Tokyo, a through line connecting this sport through time and space, this year marks the end point. Or so says Dettori. A grand world farewell tour in what is supposed to be his final season in the saddle. It began in California, where he jumped into an American jockey colony for the first time in more than 30 years; a man half a century old, and immediately he made his mark. Now it’s on to Dubai, where Dettori used to winter, and then back to Europe. The European portion of his goodbye tour must include a stop to ride in Italy, back in time to where it all began.
Dettori has the mount on English 2000 Guineas favorite Chaldean and expects to be at Newmarket to ride the colt
May 6 in the Guineas – unless he should happen upon a live Kentucky Derby contender after returning to America next week. He’ll ride the European flat season, hoping for a chance at a seventh Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe win in October.
Dettori says he’ll call it quits after the Breeders’ Cup at Santa Anita – unless he finds a ride in the Melbourne Cup the Tuesday after Breeders’ Cup Saturday. That race and the Kentucky Derby, those are the two big ones left on Dettori’s bucket list. He has won every major race in Europe, most more than once, five Group 1’s in Hong Kong, three Japan Cups, one Breeders’ Cup Classic, and the Breeders’ Cup Turf five times.
“Santa Anita opening day was packed, and they were there to see him,” Baffert said. “Jockeys, they used to be superstars, and Frankie’s like that.”
Even stars have a lifespan: The gathering of particles, the main sequence, supernova, darkness.
“At the moment I plan on leaving at the end of the season,” Dettori said last week, holding forth by phone while going through a workout. Dettori trains his aging body hard to stay in riding shape, especially in America, where the scale of weights is lower than Europe’s. He and fellow SoCal rider Mike Smith, 57, are “fitness fanatics,” Dettori said.
“I still feel good at the moment,” Dettori said. “The only thing not working right is my eyesight. I have to wear glasses to read the Racing Form.”
Always with a joke at the ready, that Frankie. Always with a smile, the showman’s touch, his elfin figure, five-foot-four, flitting about a winner’s circle, “jibber-jabbering” excitedly with an owner overjoyed merely to feel the effusive charisma of this famous jockey.
Dettori met Hall of Fame rider Angel Cordero when he came to America. It was from Cordero that Dettori picked up his signature move, the flying dismount, first deployed publicly after Barathea won the 1994 Breeders’ Cup Mile. Drop the reins, crouch in the stirrups, spring up and out to the left, throwing your arms straight above your head as you soar through the air and land alongside your winning mount. While Dettori learned the maneuver from Cordero, acrobatics already pulsed through his blood: His mother was a circus performer, a trapeze artist who could ride two horses while standing up.
Just as the flying dismount is a shiny costume cloaking a dedicated master craftsman, Cordero taught Dettori more than a fun way to jump off a horse. Dettori’s first riding lessons came from his father, Gianfranco Dettori, a successful jockey in Italy. Frankie Dettori dropped out of school at 14 to learn all he could, top to bottom, about riding racehorses. At 16, his father set him up with the Luca Cumani yard in England. Dettori rode European
style when he first came to America. Cordero taught him to ride like an American, staying on his toes, crouching low in the saddle. The hybrid education made him the international giant he’s become, a rider unmarried to a region’s particular racing rhythms. Flat tracks and undulation, left-handed and right-handed, dirt and turf, staying races and sprints, front-runners and dead closers – bring them all on.
“His style has been a perfect blend of European and American. If you wanted to go anywhere in the world, he’s the one jockey you’d want,” Gosden said. “He’s like a chameleon the way he adapts. He can handle any situation.”
Take this California winter. Dettori folded right into the local colony. He has ridden 17 winners at the Santa Anita meet, which began Dec. 26.
“When he came to California, we’re faster and we’re tighter,” said Baffert. “It’s a quick, fast
game. Within the first day, he was like, ‘I got it.’ It just came easy to him.”
Walking away from it all – that is not going to be easy.
“I’ll be heartbroken when I stop. I tried to look from the outside of it, to enjoy this last
year, to not feel sad,” Dettori said.
He can’t quite bring himself to say he’s retiring. “At the moment” qualifies his statement of intent to hang up his spurs.
“When you’re a jockey, it’s a lifestyle,” Dettori said. “It’s been years and years to get me where I am now. It is a life, and I’ll have to recharge my brain and my mindset. It’s not going to be easy. I’ve been seeking advice from other jockeys that have retired – including my dad. I’m planning to get into the media side as a commentator or something like that .…”
The uncertainty creeps in. The Dettori mindset has roots deeper than racing. His exuberance is born of innate restlessness. His brain works quickly and requires engagement. He needs a challenge, craves action, thrives on attention. “I have to find something else,” he said. “I can lie on the beach for a few days – but not much more.”
The years have not all piled up on the shores of serenity. “Like all extraordinary athletes, you have to keep him in the zone,” Gosden explained.
When Dettori first began riding for Gosden, it marked the end of his career’s first act. A planned winter in Hong Kong during the early 1990s had to be abandoned after Dettori was issued a police caution for possessing a small quantity of cocaine. He partied hard, surfed his success to a crest of celebrity, led a life not uncommon to a rich, young star athlete.
His long Godolphin stint ended with Dettori miffed at being passed over for plum rides. He fought his weight with the usual injurious tactics and potions. After his break with Godolphin came another encroachment of cocaine: Dettori tested positive during 2013 in France, receiving a six-month ban. There have been the usual myriad injuries inseparable from his perilous profession. And Dettori almost died in a 2000 plane crash in Newmarket that killed the small aircraft’s pilot.
None of this is mere murmured backstage gossip: Dettori, an open book, pulled few punches in an autobiography and has invited many a journalist to peruse the darker corners of his psyche. His life has unspooled like a movie – and one has been made about it.
The script continues along a common arc: Marriage in 1997 and a slow settling into middle age. Dettori and his wife, Catharine, have five children. Dettori remains strong, capable, and youthful – but 52 is 52. A year ago, coming back to the interview room following the World Cup, Dettori obviously was exhausted. He asked for water before even attempting a joke. Racing over a deep, laboring track, Dettori had to encourage Country Grammer, a true grinder, nearly every step of the race’s 1 1/4 miles. Dettori never had ridden the horse, but Country Grammer’s primary owner, Amr Zedan, insisted on obtaining Dettori’s services for the World Cup.
Dettori rode Country Grammer to victory in the San Antonio Stakes on Dec. 26 at Santa Anita and to a second-place finish last month in the $20 million Saudi Cup. What Country Grammer lacks in brilliance he makes up for in heart. He’s favored to win his second World Cup, Dettori’s sixth.
“He’s going to leave everything on the table,” said Dettori. “That’s why I love the horse.”
Dettori loved no horse more than Enable, the great Gosden-trained mare who won the Arc in 2017 and 2018 but failed to become the first three-time Arc winner in 2019. Soft ground played a part in her defeat, but Enable also was at the end of her fourth season of racing. Father Time, as they say, is undefeated.
“I used to see her four times a week,” Dettori said. “Emotionally, she took me to places I’d never been. She was adored by the world, and I could feel that. When I rode her at Churchill in the mornings before the Breeders’ Cup, it was like going out with Elizabeth Taylor. I think she knew she was good. When she came racing, she seemed like she grew a foot taller. She wasn’t nervous or overwrought, but she ground her teeth like a boxer. You could see it in her eyes. She thrived on the attention, thrived on the crowd. I cried for two days when she was retired.”
Dettori’s voice swelled with feeling talking about a great mare he rode once upon a time. He might as well have been talking about himself.