Why racing needs Frankie Dettori

Heading for a holiday in Sardinia, I remembered that the last time we were there our engine-less, drifting boat was rescued by a Mr Dettori. Mrs Oakley’s relief was tempered only by my disappointment that our saviour wasn’t Frankie or even a relative. This time it looks as though it is Frankie, the world’s favourite sardine, who might need rescue.

Imagine Morecambe splitting with Wise or Torvill walking out on Dean. The racing world has focused on little else since John Gosden announced, after openly criticising some of his stable jockey’s rides at Royal Ascot, that he and Frankie Dettori are taking a sabbatical. John Gosden is the epitome of elder statesman urbanity, the unruffled Mr Cool of the parade ring with a lucid explanation for everything, greeting thrilling victories or unlucky setbacks with the same sagacious calm. By his standards this was an untidy affair, the racing public learning first that Frankie had not been booked for two runners at Newmarket the following Saturday trained by John and his son Thady. Only after the headlines created by that news was there a meeting between jockey and employer followed by the revelation of the ‘sabbatical’.

Frankie had an unlucky and unfortunate Royal Ascot. At the start of the Prince of Wales’s Stakes, Lord North’s blindfold caught in his bridle, delaying his exit from the stalls and wrecking his chance. On Stradivarius in the Gold Cup there was maximum pressure on his jockey: had they won, the hot favourite would have equalled Yeats’s record of four victories. Inexplicably Frankie chose at one stage to take him back a few places, letting the leader get away. He was then, legitimately, held in close to the rails by other jockeys and had to come wide in the straight too late to mount an effective challenge at the finish.