Seven-Race Sweep in England Puts Dettori in the Limelight

The only time that jockey Frankie Dettori won a Breeders’ Cup race, at Churchill Downs in 1994, he was shortchanged. American turf writers went to their word processors and composed paeans about Concern, the unexpected winner of the Breeders’ Cup Classic. Dettori’s win aboard Barathea in the Mile got two paragraphs in most publications.

Two weeks from today, Dettori will ride Mark Of Esteem, an arthritic colt but nevertheless the probable favorite in the Breeders’ Cup Mile at Woodbine, and if the 25-year-old Italian wins the race again, he may not let reporters out of the interview room until they’ve promised to repay him. When Dettori wins an important race, he wants the world to know about it, so you can imagine how he was at Ascot last month, sweeping a seven-race card in a record-setting performance and costing the English bookmakers an estimated $40 million. They had laid 25,095-1 odds that Dettori couldn’t do it.

After he did, and after the press interviews and the signing of hundreds of autographs, Dettori went out with a big bottle of champagne and sprayed dozens in the lingering crowd. It’s the antithesis of spitting in an umpire’s face. “Thank you for staying,” Dettori said. They wiped the bubbly out of their eyes and gave him one more ovation.

“It was one of the most extraordinary achievements I’ve ever seen in racing,” said trainer John Gosden, who saddled one of Dettori’s seven winners. “We are in the entertainment business, and if you can’t be entertained by that, you must be dead from the collar up.”

When Dettori goes to Woodbine, in Toronto, on Oct. 26, the track will be tempted to revoke his passport, forcing him to stay. To think, earlier this year, that some hidebound English stewards chided Dettori for his ejector-seat habit, the one patented by Angel Cordero in New York. Were they thinking of fining him for spilling that champagne too? Dettori doesn’t vault from the saddle after all of his wins, only the ones that especially inspire him. On the day that he rolled a seven at Ascot, he orbited after his win aboard Mark Of Esteem in the Queen Elizabeth II Stakes and naturally after his final win, on a horse that had been bet down from 12-1 on the morning line to 2-1 by post time.

A few days later, Dettori was posing with a self-employed laborer who had made the biggest score at Ascot, collecting about $786,000 on a bet of about $94. Only days before, the bettor had been refused a bank loan and his business was about to go under.

The son of a jockey who was 13 times an Italian champion, Gianfranco Dettori was sent to Great Britain by his father in 1986 to learn how to ride, and Luca Cumani, the trainer who took him, remembers that he was a high-strung teenager who needed a short leash. A quick learner, though, Dettori was 16 when he won his first race with a filly named Lizzy Hare, who under Gary Stevens would win the Del Mar Oaks for the Clover Racing Stable and trainer Richard Cross a couple of months later.

The road to riding first string for Sheik Mohammed was not without its potholes. Dettori was caught on the fringe of a drug bust. He and Cumani had a falling out, not speaking for six months, and Dettori went to Hong Kong to ride before returning to Britain, where he became champion jockey in 1994 and 1995.

Gosden, who left his native England to train successfully in Southern California for several years during the 1980s, has long been a Dettori booster. Gosden says that Dettori has innately combined the qualities that the best riders in the United States and Europe have. “He has beautiful balance,” Gosden told a British journalist. “He has phenomenal hands, like a concert pianist’s, and he is always thinking. On top of that, he’s an utterly genuine 100 percenter, as fine a young man as you could hope to work with.”

Louis Wolfson, who raced Affirmed when he swept the Triple Crown in 1978, has long complained that racing doesn’t promote its jockeys enough. “Bill Shoemaker came to New York one day,” Wolfson once said, “and you couldn’t find a line in any of the papers that he was going to ride.”

Both New York and California, where the sport is in the doldrums, could use a Frankie Dettori. He’ll be at Woodbine in a fortnight. Find him and somehow get him across that border.

Horse Racing Notes

The purse for Friday’s Breeders’ Futurity Stakes at Keeneland was $267,750, but for one horse the 1 1/16-mile race was worth $1 million more.

Boston Harbor earned an extra $1 million for his owner, William T. Young, by winning the Futurity and sweeping a four-race Kentucky series for 2-year-olds at Churchill Downs, Ellis Park, Turfway Park and Keeneland. Young and his trainer, Wayne Lukas, also won a $1-million bonus with Mountain Cat in 1992.

Boston Harbor had to work to win Friday. Blazing Sword edged ahead in mid-stretch before Boston Harbor and jockey Jerry Bailey came on again to win by half a length. Boston Harbor had other jockeys--Mike Luzzi once and Donna Barton twice--for his previous wins, but Bailey, the country’s leading rider, took over Friday after promising Lukas that he’d also be aboard for the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile at Woodbine on Oct. 26.

Boston Harbor, whose only loss in six starts was a second-place finish on a muddy track at Saratoga, will be one of the favorites in the Juvenile. He paid $2.40 at Keeneland, winning in a time of 2:45 2/5. Haint finished third in a five-horse field.

Because of Chris McCarron’s suspension, Eddie Delahoussaye will ride Alpride Sunday in the $125,000 Las Palmas Handicap at Santa Anita.

Alpride, winless since winning last year’s Yellow Ribbon, shares high weight in the 1 1/8-mile grass race with Wandesta, who’ll also carry 120 pounds. Others in the field are Real Connection and Wende, 113 pounds apiece, and Convertida, 112 pounds. Wandesta will be running off a six-month layoff.

Top Rung, winner over Jewel Princess in the Lady’s Secret Handicap last Sunday, will run in the Breeders’ Cup Distaff. Top Rung finished second in the Distaff at Belmont Park last year. . . . Admise, winner via disqualification in the Oak Tree Turf Championship, is headed for the Breeders’ Cup Turf. The only females to win the race have been Miss Alleged in 1991 and Pebbles in 1985.

Gary Stevens will ride Interim today in the $350,000 Flower Bowl Handicap at Belmont. Alex Solis and Corey Nakatani will also be out of town, riding in the $200,000 Bay Meadows Breeders’ Cup Derby, and Kent Desormeaux is at Laurel Park for the Maryland Million card. . . . Betting on Friday-night racing from Australia has begun at Santa Anita. The Friday cards from Australia will be shown at Santa Anita and Hollywood Park through Dec. 27, with the $2.2-million Melbourne Cup scheduled for Nov. 4.