How to stay at the top, by Frankie Dettori
The veteran jockey reveals how he has kept his level of success consistent for decades
Words: Joseph Bullmore
How has Frankie Dettori achieved such a long, fulfilling career? “It’s simple: get on the right horse,” he answers, giggling. “That’s my motto. I often had the right horse at the right time.”
It would be more accurate, however, to say that the horses had the right rider. Dettori is the greatest jockey in the modern sport; perhaps the greatest jockey ever. He has ridden more than 3000 winners in a career spanning nearly 30 years, and is beating the field with the same regularity and panache today, aged 47, as he was when he was a teenager.
“When you’re young you’re not in control of the pressure because you don’t know how to handle it,” he says. “And even I still feel nervous now. But when you’re young the knife is double-edged. Too much energy is bad. Now I use that energy to perform even better. I’ve changed the way I look at it a lot.” The sport has also changed with him. “When I first started, I didn’t even know what a diet was!” he laughs. “Now you can analyse everything, exactly what to eat and exactly what time to eat it. Now it’s more sponsorship, media…”
“That’s my motto. I often had the right horse at the right time...”
Not that Dettori has ever shied away from the limelight. In fact, it has been a singular driver in his long career. “Fame was the reason. 100per cent,” he says. “Some people hate it. I loved it. I’d be a liar to say that I didn’t want it.” Want it or not, it came all at once on 28th September 1996.
At British Champions’ Day at Ascot, with the Queen looking on, Dettori did the impossible by riding all seven of his horses to victory. He defied the odds, quite literally: to the joy of the sporting world, and to the utter dismay of the bookmakers. “It was like any normal day,” he tells us. “I sat and opened a newspaper and I’m going through my rides, and I thought: ‘First one should win, second one has no chance, third one I can win, fourth… don’t know. Fifth, don’t know. Sixth, a chance. Seven: no chance.’”
By the time he’d skipped to victory in races one, two, three, four, and five (thanks to “luck, mistakes, random, crazy things,” he says) the grandstand was at a fever pitch. “And then I got to number six. Now, of course I had sweaty hands because I realised only three jockeys had ever won six in a row. I’d be equal to a 300-year record, you know? So now I’m panicking.”
The rest, of course, is history: the field in races six and seven beaten with aplomb; bookies tearing their hair out; punters winning a quarter of a million on a 50p stake. Frankie, for his part, went on to have a dismal evening. “I had a massive row with my girlfriend after going to this lousy party — pulling the duvet off each other in bed, that sort of thing. Meant to be the best day of my life!” he laughs.
But a career this long can’t all be champagne and royal boxes. In 2012, Dettori had fallen out of favour with his Godolphin stables (“I felt like Ronaldo sitting on the bench”), and made the difficult decision to part ways with the team after 18 years. Godolphin’s owner, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, used to describe Dettori as a son. Now? “We might say hello if I see him at a race. It’s like a divorce.”
Worse was to come. In November 2012, Dettori failed a drugs test while riding in France, and was suspended from riding for six months for taking a prohibited substance, believed to be cocaine. Many thought this was the end of the jockey’s career. But Dettori has a way of bouncing back. The jockey secured a cavalcade of high-profile wins (by way of a stint in the Celebrity Big Brother house), culminating in the 2015 Investec Derby win on Golden Horn.
“I felt like Ronaldo sitting on the bench...”
“Out of all my wins, that was the most exciting moment I ever had,” he says. “I can’t describe the feeling — shivers. I was 44, and my kids were old enough to understand what a Derby was. My son came up to the race before me and said, ‘Good luck, daddy.’ So it meant a lot.”
If Dettori wins at the Investec Derby again this year, his reputation as the greatest jockey of all time will be sealed. What advice does he give to the many young jockeys who look up to him?
“I don’t have much advice, because what works for me won’t work for other people. I would say ‘work hard’, but then I didn’t work very hard!” He laughs. “I just try to surround myself with good energy, with good people. If your dog dies, don’t tell me, because it will influence how I feel. I’ll try to set off the day being on a positive note. What I think goes through my arms into the horse’s mouth. It’s up to you to become friends with the horse in your body language. In a way I’m a psychiatrist of horses because we have to get inside their head.”
Dettori plans to keep racing past 50, he tells me, and he’ll almost certainly keep winning until he dismounts his horse for the final time. The jockey’s flying dismount — two hands in the air, legs flaring behind him like a trapeze artist— has become something of a signature. “First they told me not to do that. It didn’t look good, apparently. But then, a few years later, they encouraged me to do it because ‘It’s good for racing! It brings a bit of fun!’ So yes, I’ll keep doing it as long as I keep winning,” he says. “Or at least as long as my knees hold out…”
This article was taken from the ‘How to Win’ section of Gentleman’s Journal May/June Issue. Subscribe here to get the magazine delivered directly to your door…
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