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Frankie Dettori after winning the St Leger on Scorpion

Frankie Dettori in the St Leger: David Ord on two very different winners

By David Ord

Horse Racing

Sat September 16, 2023 · 1y ago

Frankie Dettori bids for a seventh and final St Leger winner on Saturday. David Ord remembers two very different days at Doncaster for the rider.

Think of Frankie Dettori and the St Leger and you might remember Conduit, Sir Michael Stoute’s globetrotting middle-distance star who took a firm step up the ladder when carrying the Italian to victory in the 2008 renewal. Remarkably it was a first success in the Classic for the trainer.

It wasn’t for the rider. After a few failed attempts he’d broken his duck 13 years previously aboard Classic Cliche. But when I think of Frankie and the Leger I think of two winners – Shantou and Scorpion – and two very different afternoons, reactions and stages in the rider’s remarkable career.

Shantou and Frankie Dettori win the St Leger

Let’s start back in 1996 with Shantou and a very important afternoon for his team.

It’s hard to believe nowadays but there was a time when the pressure was on John Gosden. He was brought home from America by Sheikh Mohammed and set up in Stanley House in '89. But despite an armada of expensively-bought, blue-bloods in the famous maroon and while silks to go to war with, winners, and in particular big winners, were not flowing at the anticipated rate.

“How good is Gosden?” the wonderful David Ashforth asked in the Sporting Life during its broadsheet days. Nowadays, the question would be deemed to be rhetorical.

Shantou was one of the horses who turned things around, providing the trainer with a first British Classic when getting the better of Dushyantor under a jubilant jockey.

It was a ride that would have had the whip review committee reaching for the expulsion tool nowadays, a left-hand drive in the closing stages that his partner, a rare Classic winner to be carrying the Timeform squiggle into the race, responded to in the manner of one without such a suffix to overhaul the runner-up.

And they could breathe.

Dettori produced a flying dismount and raced to find the trainer.

Shantou wins the St. Leger 1996

Gosden was cool, calm and calculated as he reflected on the victory moments later on Channel Four, only for a youthful and exuberant rider to burst through the press pack to try and lift the trainer from his feet yelling ‘well done Johnny, brilliant, brilliant!’

“I think I might have been a little lost without him today," Gosden admitted. “He rode the most phenomenal race and I’m not sure too many other men in the world would have won on him. In fact, he only runs for Frankie. I’d have been stuck had he not ridden him, I really would have been."

Dettori said: "It was great. I really felt something. We’ve really been under an enormous pressure all year. Our best horses broke down unfortunately and it’s not helpful when everyone criticises you. This race meant a lot for me, as equal as the Derby, I wanted to do it for John so much. The horse was in perfect nick.

"The full credit goes to the whole of the yard who stuck with us throughout the year. John’s record speaks for itself. He proved it today, and if he gets the right horse, he’ll produce them on the day. I’m thrilled to ride for him and hope we carry on for numerous years.”

A golden day for Dettori who shielded his eyes from the early-autumn sunshine as he spoke to Brough Scott. But if Shantou was a day to circle the wagons and take aim at the doubters, nine years later in the Town Moor gloom, Scorpion was one to pick sides.

By now Godolphin were in full swing and Dettori their poster-boy retained rider. It was also right bang in the middle of the fall-out between the Maktoum brothers and Coolmore.

The Dubai team boycotted the Irish juggernaut’s stallions in both the sales ring and the covering sheds, ultimately to their significant cost.

So, when Kieren Fallon opted to stay in Ireland to ride Oratorio in the Irish Champion Stakes rather than travel to Doncaster, Dettori wasn’t the first name on many people’s shortlist to replace him aboard Scorpion.

After all he was pencilled in to head over to Leopardstown himself to take aim at the home fancy in the Irish Champion aboard Derby winner Motivator. But the Epsom hero’s participation was in doubt because of the forecast fast ground and with no Godolphin big guns in action on either side of the Irish Sea, Dettori threw his hat into the Scorpion ring.

Some say he rang Aidan O’Brien himself to secure the ride, others that it was the master of Ballydoyle who made the first move. However it unfolded, Dettori switched from the royal blue to the dark blue for just over 20 minutes and produced a fine front-running ride to win the Classic for the enemy.

And that’s how it felt in the minutes, hours and days afterwards.

There are no videos of the race on YouTube, few photos of the flying dismount, just the memories of the day.

Scorpion is in control of the St Leger under Dettori

Of Dettori admitting it was “weird” to be winning a big race in those silks, of thanking Sheikh Mohammed for allowing him to take the ride, and you have to presume approval came from fairly high up the food chain, before he went even further.

He appeared on the Simon Mayo drivetime show on Radio Five Live and seemed to apologise for riding Scorpion. I’m not sure his employer was an avid listener as good as the show was, but that’s how deep the feelings ran.

“It left a bit of a sour taste with everybody, so perhaps I shouldn't have done it," Dettori said. "They are our main rivals. You can't be black one day and then white another day. I made a winning mistake – but you learn by your mistakes."

Winning a St Leger by mistake isn’t the norm – but nothing about that afternoon at Doncaster was.

This was like Denis Law scoring the winner in a Manchester derby in the blue shirt but not only celebrating, collecting a wage from the red half too.

Clearly there was a thaw in the years that followed, more big-race glory for the most successful racing operation in the modern-history of the turf.

But that first one, in the St Leger, was a rarity. A big moment where Dettori wanted to be anywhere else but in the limelight.

A sharp contrast to Shantou in 1996.

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