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Last Sunday the Italian jockey Lanfranco Dettori, known to all as Frankie, won six consecutive races at the Santa Anita Derby, a series of races held every year in April at the Santa Anita Park racecourse in Arcadia, California. In the seventh race he narrowly finished second: if he had won that too, he would have equaled the Santa Anita record, set in 1987 by Panamanian jockey Laffit Pincay Junior, who won 7 races in one day. Dettori is 53 years old and, after competing for over thirty years mainly in the United Kingdom, he has decided to move to the United States for his final season as a professional. For years he has been considered one of the most successful jockeys in history.
Dettori was born in Milan in 1970 and is the son of Gianfranco Dettori, who himself was a successful jockey, thirteen-time Italian champion and winner of several races in the United Kingdom. Frankie Dettori specializes in flat gallop races, i.e. races where the horses do not have to jump over obstacles, but have to run on a course (between 800 and 4,000 meters long) trying to reach the finish line before the others.
The jockeys who ride them, like Dettori, do not sit on the saddle, but stand, with their feet resting on the stirrups, and must be very light (they must weigh less than 57 kilos to be admitted to flat races). In these races the horses reach speeds close to 70 kilometers per hour. The jockey’s job is to guide the horse (which does not know where the finishing line is), regulating its pace and encouraging it to go at maximum speed. It is physically and mentally intense work for both the jockey and the horse, and requires a certain level of understanding between the two, which must be perfected in training.
(Alex Livesey/Getty Images)
Throughout his career, Dettori has raced some of the best thoroughbred horses, a particular breed selected for galloping on racecourses, such as Fantastic Light, Enable and Stradivarius, winning several major British and world races. He made his debut when he was only nine years old, at the San Siro racecourse in Milan, in a pony derby (a race between ponies), and it was a disaster: he came last on his first horse, the pony Silvia, and fell just after passing the finish line. At fourteen Dettori moved to the United Kingdom, the country with the greatest equestrian tradition and where the most prestigious horse races in the world are held. His first victory came on 9 June 1987 at Goodwood Racecourse.
In 1994, 1995 and 2004 Frankie Dettori was British flat racing champion jockey, i.e. the jockey with the highest number of races won in the calendar year (233, 211 and 192 respectively; no other Italian has ever won this title). The six races won last Sunday in California are considered an exceptional sporting result, but for Dettori it was not the first time nor even the best result: on 28 September 1996, almost certainly the best day of his career, the Italian jockey won them all seven races of British festival of racing day at Ascot Racecourse. It is one of the most prestigious racecourses in the world, founded about ten kilometers from Windsor Castle in 1711 by Queen Anne of England, and no one other than Dettori has managed to win seven races there on the same day.
Frankie Dettori’s seven victories at Ascot, 28 September 1996
Horse racing is still a very popular sport, particularly in the United Kingdom, but also quite controversial, mainly for two reasons, betting and animal rights. A good part of the interest in horse racing is in fact linked to betting: the market research company Allied Market Research has estimated that in 2022 the global horse racing betting market will have exceeded 40 billion euros and in a recent report predicted that it could double by 2032. For this reason, even more than in other sports, the exceptional nature of a result in horse racing is very often measured by the odds that were associated with it before the race: the victory of the seven races in a single day at Ascot that Dettori succeeded in 1996, for example, she was paid by betting agencies around 25,000 times the stake (by playing one pound, therefore, you would win 25 thousand). It is estimated that Dettori, by achieving that remarkable result, cost over 45 million euros to agencies.
Above all, horse racing is a very dangerous sport for the health of horses, both in its galloping variants and (above all) in those in which obstacles are jumped. The observatory Race Horse Death Watch, founded in 2007 by the animal rights association Animal Aid, monitors fatal accidents that occur in races: so far it has recorded 2,770 dead horses, more than one every three days. Furthermore, the observatory believes that these numbers are decidedly underestimated.
Furthermore, as we read above Race Horse Death Watch, «racetrack deaths are only part of the sad history of horse racing. Research work carried out over the years by Animal Aid demonstrates that the industry treats thoroughbreds as mere breeding commodities and kills or dumps thousands of them every year when they fail to reach an adequate level or when their racing days end.”
During racing, horses can break their legs or, even worse, their backs and necks, as well as risk having heart attacks. When racehorses get hurt, they are often put down even if the accident is not fatal, because they can no longer race. Also according to Animal Aid, up to 75 percent of racehorses suffer from lung haemorrhages and 93 percent from gastric ulcers.
(Michael Steele/Getty Images)
Last year, 118 activists were arrested for protesting against the Grand National, one of the main steeplechase races held in the United Kingdom. The protesters delayed the start of the race and, on this occasion, a petition was launched (which exceeded 36 thousand signatures) to ban that race.
In addition to the horses, horse racing is also a risky sport for the people who ride it. Last April 3, the 23-year-old Italian jockey Stefano Cherchi, considered one of the emerging talents of international horse racing, died in Australia. Cherchi died from the consequences of a fall that occurred two weeks earlier, on 20 March 2024, during a race at Thoroughbred Park racecourse in Canberra.
– Read also: Doubts about the future of American horse racing
Frankie Dettori has had some accidents in his career, but the most dangerous one was not on horseback: in 2000 a small plane he was flying on crashed in Newmarket, a town in the county of Suffolk, in eastern England (the same one where , at 14, Dettori had moved). Dettori and the other jockey who was on board, Ray Cochrane, were saved, while the pilot of the plane died. Despite the serious accident, Dettori returned to racing quickly and started winning again.
This leap to dismount after a winning race has become a signature move for Frankie Dettori (Alex Livesey/Getty Images)
The Italian jockey spent most of his career (the years between 1994 and 2012) racing for Godolphin, the private thoroughbred horse racing stable of the Maktoum family, the royal family of the emirate of Dubai. In all, he won 23 British Classics (the five thoroughbred races considered the most prestigious): only Lester Piggott, the best jockey ever, won more (30, between 1954 and 1992).
Dettori has also won 81 races at Ascot, four of them in 2023, the last year he competed in the UK. Right outside the racecourse, she was installed last year a statue in his honor, with Queen Consort Camilla present at the inauguration. In the United Kingdom, Frankie Dettori has become a public figure over the years and is considered by horse racing enthusiasts to be a sporting legend.
2024-04-10 13:14:57
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