There is only one man in racing who could pop up on London’s Southbank — not exactly deep equine country — on the autumn’s first truly miserable morning and have his press call disrupted by a stream of early-bird joggers eager for selfies.
The scene is a slightly strange one, the chap in question bouncing around on a trampoline as photographers capture his famous flying dismount with Big Ben as the rather out-of-place backdrop. The rotating cast of double-taking plodders, though, offer some indication of the hole that will be left in the sport in this country when its most recognisable figure, Frankie Dettori, waves goodbye.
Tomorrow, British Champions Day at Ascot, is — despite his international retirement U-turn last week — due to mark the end of Dettori’s riding career on these shores, the culmination of a season-long farewell tour that has taken the 52-year-old the length and breadth of the nation since he first announced his intention to call time last December.
“It was very hard to decide where to stop,” he tells Standard Sport. “I was thinking more of Newmarket because I’m a Newmarket boy of 38 years. I didn’t want to do it at Champions Day because I thought it would take the focus away from what Champions Day is all about, which is to crown the best horses of this year.”
Ascot, though, was keen and the hope for Dettori is that abdication and coronation might yet go hand-in-hand, the departing king of that course blessed with a stellar book of rides, including Kinross and King Of Steel.
I can say one day when I am ready to stop, I can stop.
“I could’ve picked an easier place to try to ride my last winner,” he admits. “[But] it’s my favourite track, it’s where I broke the record of seven winners in a day. Nine Gold Cups, seven King Georges, over 80 Royal Ascot winners. It is my home and it all fits in nicely.”
Throughout this supposed final season, Dettori has continued to add to such tallies, including with Classic victories on his final Epsom Oaks and 2000 Guineas rides. What has this year of incessant ‘lasts’ been like? “Oh, terrible!” he says with a laugh. “Stressful! I thought when I said I was going to retire, things were going to ease up. I’ve had twice as much workload. It’s been hard work, it’s been emotional. But I’m human, what do you expect?”
As it happens, exactly this. I arrive on the Southbank to interview Dettori just in time to catch him recording his Jordan Belfort moment, the video clip that will be shared on social media in which, after weeks of speculation, he confirms the inevitable: that he is still sort of f***ing leaving, but also sort of not.
“We had a bit of a change of mind…” he says. Dettori’s plan had always been for an international sojourn following Champions Day, taking in major meetings in the US and Australia before signing off at the end of the year in Hong Kong. Now, though, he will up sticks and relocate to the States full-time in 2024, with the intention of riding on indefinitely.
“I’ve had an amazing year and I need to get it out of my system,” Dettori explains. “I thought no better way than going to the States where I don’t have to travel, the weather’s nice, it gives me a new challenge and I can say one day when I am ready to stop, I can stop. I’m a bit more away from the limelight and I can slowly fizzle out from my sport.”
Here, by contrast, a media frenzy has followed Dettori’s protracted swan-song, with so much demand for reflection that by now a series of ‘quick-fire questions’ produce answers genuinely worthy of the brief. Live one triumph all over again? Enable’s second Arc. One that got away? Swain in the Breeders’ Cup Classic (“I made a balls-up of that”). What will retirement bring? “A nice Italian meal and a ski holiday with my kids”. You can only hope they did not have it booked.
Not everyone in racing has been pleased with the way a drawn-out saga has unfolded and most are convinced Dettori will even be tempted back to Britain, where he first rode in 1987, for the likes of Royal Ascot next year.
Naively, I wonder whether having spent so long in the game, and gotten so much more out of it than most, might not make it easier to walk away?
“The more you do it, the harder it is to let go,” Dettori insists. “When you do something for 36 years every day it’ll take a while. That’s why I’m extending, because I’m not ready to give up yet.”
