Stradivarius - one of the star names at Glorious Goodwood

Stradivarius in Gold Cup-winning action

Frankie Dettori's Royal Ascot winners including Stradivarius and Palace Pier

By John Ingles

Horse Racing

Mon June 19, 2023 · 2y ago

With Frankie Dettori soon to ride at Royal Ascot for the final time, John Ingles reviews the record of the meeting's most successful active jockey.

FRANKIE DETTORI ROYAL ASCOT FACT FILE

Total winners: 77
Leading jockey: 6 times - 1997 (4 wins), 1998 (7), 1999 (4), 2003 (3), 2004 (6), 2019 (7), 2020 (6)
First ride: Rain Burst, trained by Luca Cumani, fifth in Coronation Stakes 1989
First winner: Markofdistinction, trained by Luca Cumani, Queen Anne Stakes 1990
First Group 1 winner: Drum Taps, trained by Lord Huntingdon, Gold Cup 1992
Most successful years: 1998, 2019 (7 wins)
Trainers providing most winners: Saeed bin Suroor (24), John (and Thady) Gosden 19, Wesley Ward 4
Most successful races: Gold Cup (8 wins), Ribblesdale Stakes (8), Queen Anne Stakes (7)
Longest-priced winner: Invisible Man (28/1), trained by Saeed bin Suroor, Royal Hunt Cup 2010
Four-timer: 20/6/19 A’ali (Norfolk Stakes), Sangarius (Hampton Court Stakes), Star Catcher (Ribblesdale Stakes), Stradivarius (Gold Cup)

With a total of 77 victories, Frankie Dettori has ridden more winners at Royal Ascot than any other jockey currently riding.

He opened his score at the age of 19 when riding Markofdistinction to victory in the Queen Anne Stakes in 1990, a year after his first ride at the meeting on Rain Splash, for Markofdistinction’s trainer Luca Cumani, in the Coronation Stakes.

Dettori was to win the Queen Anne another six times, making it one of the Royal Ascot races in which he has had the most success, though it was only a Group 2 contest when Markofdistinction won it. However, the same colt provided Dettori with the first of numerous Group 1 victories in his career when successful back at Ascot later in the year in the Queen Elizabeth II Stakes.

First Royal Ascot Group 1

Dettori didn’t take long to win his first Group 1 at the royal meeting which came aboard the Lord Huntingdon-trained favourite Drum Taps in 1992, a victory the partnership was to repeat a year later. The Gold Cup was to become another of Dettori’s most successful races at the meeting over the years with eight wins in all.

That matches his total in the Ribblesdale Stakes, and Dettori registered his first win in that contest in 1995, again for Lord Huntingdon, on the Queen’s filly Phantom Gold, his only winner at the meeting in the royal colours. Phantom Gold initiated Dettori’s first Royal Ascot treble that day, with the final leg coming in silks he’d enjoy much more success with in the years to come.

So Factual’s win in what was then the Group 3 Cork And Orrery Stakes (nowadays a Group 1 contest, to be run this year as the Queen Elizabeth II Jubilee Stakes) was to be the first of no fewer than 24 victories for Godolphin’s trainer Saeed bin Suroor.

Two years later, it was another Queen Anne win on Godolphin’s Allied Forces which provided Dettori with the first of his four winners that week which made him Royal Ascot’s leading jockey for the first time, less than a year after going through the card at the same track with his seven-timer the previous autumn.

Link with the Gosden stable

Another of Dettori’s four winners in 1997 was Heritage in the King George V Handicap. That proved to be Dettori’s first win at the meeting for the other trainer who has provided the lion’s share of his Royal Ascot success, John Gosden. Gosden supplied another couple of winners for Dettori when he was top rider at the meeting again in 1998, this time with seven winners, and two more again in 1999, but would play a much bigger role a lot later in the jockey’s career.

For the time being, though, it was Godolphin who Dettori could rely on for Royal Ascot winners on an annual basis. Those seven winners in 1998 – his joint-best tally at any Royal Ascot despite it still being a four-day meeting at the time – included further wins in the Queen Anne, Ribblesdale and Gold Cup on Intikhab, Bahr and Kayf Tara respectively in the royal blue.

Dettori was leading rider again in 1999, 2003 and 2004, with his six wins in the last of those years all coming for bin Suroor. Once again, the Queen Anne, Ribblesdale and Gold Cup were among his haul, this time with Refuse To Bend, Punctilious and Papineau.

That year, though, proved to be the high-water mark for Dettori’s success at Royal Ascot in the Godolphin silks. He missed the meeting altogether whilst serving a suspension in 2005 (when the fixture was staged at York during Ascot’s redevelopment) and came away with only one winner at each of the next four Royal Ascots. Another Gold Cup winner came along in 2012, thanks to Colour Vision, while Tha’ir won the Chesham Stakes, but they were to be Dettori’s final two Royal Ascot winners for Godolphin and bin Suroor.

Two years later, Dettori was back in the Royal Ascot winner’s enclosure in the silks of his new retainers Al Shaqab Racing. Two-year-old colts The Wow Signal and Baitha Alga won the Coventry and Norfolk Stakes, and Dettori had further success for the Qatari owners at the next two Royal Ascots, winning the Sandringham Handicap on Osaila and, in 2016, the St James’s Palace Stakes on Galileo Gold.

Dettori’s association with Al Shaqab was a brief one but he struck up a more lasting partnership around the same time with American trainer Wesley Ward’s sprinters. His first win for Ward came on Undrafted in 2015 in what was then the Diamond Jubilee Stakes. The speedy two-year-old fillies Lady Aurelia and Campanelle both won the Queen Mary Stakes under Dettori, in 2016 and 2020, with the latter also awarded the Commonwealth Cup a year later.

Leading rider titles

But it was the renewed link with John Gosden’s stable, nowadays jointly-run with son Thady, which helped Dettori become leading rider again at Royal Ascot – after a fifteen-year hiatus – in 2019 and again a year later. That was after Gosden supplied all four of Dettori’s winners in 2018, including Without Parole in the St James’s Palace Stakes and Stradivarius in the first of what were to be his three Gold Cups.

In 2019, Dettori rode seven winners to match his previous best total which he’d set 21 years earlier. He had the bookmakers running for cover and fearing a repeat of his Magnificent Seven after winning the first four races on the card on the Thursday, the last of them Stradivarius in his second Gold Cup. His other Group 1 wins that week came from Crystal Ocean in the Prince of Wales’s Stakes and Advertise in the Commonwealth Cup.

Dettori’s six winners as leading rider again in 2020 included a third and final Gold Cup for Stradivarius, bringing the jockey’s total of wins in that race to eight. He matched that total in the Ribblesdale on another Gosden winner, Frankly Darling. The same stable’s Palace Pier won the St James’s Palace Stakes, and that colt was one of three winners for Dettori at Royal Ascot in 2021 when becoming his seventh winner of the Queen Anne.

Dettori’s other wins in 2020 included a belated first success in the Coronation Stakes on the Jessica Harrington-trained Alpine Star; the Coronation was also the sole race he won at last year’s Royal Ascot, on Inspiral. That means that Dettori has ridden the winners of all eight of Royal Ascot’s current Group 1 contests, though the King’s Stand Stakes was only a Group 2 when he won it early in his career in 1994 on Lochsong.

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