Cornelius Lysaght Royal Ascot comment | Frankie Dettori on the canvas after trying week
After the Lord North debacle, things went from bad to worse on Gold Cup day for Frankie Dettori - and Cornelius Lysaght can't wait to see if he bounces back.
The jockey who has almost invariably found the going good on Flat racing’s marquee days – particularly at Ascot, whether Royal or otherwise – is suddenly encountering conditions that are proving somewhat heavier to handle.
Things simply refuse to go right at the moment for Frankie Dettori, the Italian-born darling of British Flat racing for three decades-plus, whose indifferent run of form at Epsom’s Derby Festival has spilled over into the first three days of Royal Ascot.
After defeat for the second year running in the centrepiece Gold Cup on history-seeking, three-time winner Stradivarius you could have almost cut the atmosphere with a knife as Dettori, the eight-year-old’s breeder-owner Bjorn Nielsen and trainers John and Thady Gosden gathered in the position reserved for the third-place horse for the debrief.
Dettori spoke of being beaten by “younger legs” after the four-year-olds Kyprios and Mojo Star held off Stradivarius’ storming challenge – mounted down the outside when forced to switch wide – by a total of one-and-a-quarter lengths.
In contrast, when asked if the result “felt like the one that got away” John Gosden gave an icy one-word reply – “slightly” – before striding off to saddle Saga, the first of the Queen’s three runners, which came from behind under Dettori to finish runner-up in the Britannia Handicap.
Earlier Gosden was considered to have been putting the boot in to his long-time first-choice rider, albeit subtly, when saying:
“I was a bit surprised when from being in the box-seat we dropped back so far…I just wish we’d been a little handier and not had to go around the wall of horses”.
Initially reluctant to talk about the result, Nielsen warmed to his theme.
“I’m not going to say anything about the way the race was run or the ride or anything else,” he said.
“He was boxed in, yeah, and flying at the finish. He’s on the inside and he had to come round them – like last year in a way.
“It’s a shame – you cannot blame the horse.”
I think we know what that means.
Discussions will now take place to decide whether to line-up in the Goodwood Cup in July which “Strad” has carried off on four occasions but which he missed in 2021 because of unsuitably rain-softened ground.
It was the latest twist in what is developing into a tumultuous week for the winner of 76 Royal Ascot races since the first in 1990 – and of the never-to-be-forgotten ‘Magnificent Seven’ when successful in all of the races on the Ascot programme at what was then termed the Festival of British Racing in September 1996.
He had come into the Gold Cup having endured little luck on the meeting’s first two days.
That was best illustrated when the Gosdens’ star globetrotter Lord North finished last in the Prince of Wales’s Stakes having never really got into contention after Dettori had struggled to remove a blindfold applied for stalls entry and the horse lost more than five lengths at the start; he explained to the stewards that it had become tangled in the bridle.
Although successful in a race at Group Three-level at Epsom, critics gathered following the narrow defeat by Tuesday of his Oaks mount, the Gosdens-trained favourite Emily Upjohn, after the filly stumbled at the start and challenged wide.
Back at Ascot, a day so full of early promise ended up with four defeats – as well as Stradivarius and Saga, the Queen’s one-time Derby hope Reach For The Moon was only second in the Hampton Court Stakes and Franz Strauss well-beaten in the King George V Handicap.
Dettori himself was typically phlegmatic saying: “S*** happens. I can’t go back and do it again. There’s always tomorrow.”
But if fortunes don’t change soon for the now fifty-one-year-old veteran, people will begin to wonder out loud just how long probably the most significant racing career of the modern era will continue.
It has however been, in Dettori’s own words “sometimes a rollercoaster” over the year, and with four booked rides on Friday for the Gosdens, headed by much-touted filly Inspiral, that change may arrive sooner rather than later, especially as it’s another day at Ascot, where the jockey has such a fine record. Can’t wait to see.