But it took a lot longer than I thought, for different reasons.‘People were afraid of using me because of the stigma of, “This guy’s a bad guy now, we mustn’t use him.” But in the sense of ability I still thought I was as good as anyone. ‘Nothing’s right for him, but that’s what fathers are like,’ Dettori says. He was let off with a caution, although it led to the cancellation of a lucrative contract to ride in Hong Kong. ‘The horses still have to go out; they still have to train; we still have to feed them and look after them.So nothing changed in the stable; me not being able to race – that’s what changed.’The Derby course, he says, is revered as ‘one of the most testing flat-racing tracks on the planet’. ‘You’re in the stalls, it’s like looking up a mountain,’ he says. Out of my 22 times there’s only been three or four times where I’ve managed to go through that bit thinking, “I’ve got a chance here.”‘The tempo is increasing, and this is another challenge for the horse because he has to speed up, running downhill on a left turn; it’s like a roller coaster. ‘My life is like putting a treadmill as fast as it can go and jumping on it – and I’m on it at the moment, going a million miles an hour. So, I don’t think for us it will be any less nerve-racking than it would be with a crowd. He says he was never given an explanation why, but it affected him badly. In 2013, following his ban, he ran 205 races with only 16 wins, and his prize money dropped to £567,000.Was there ever a moment, I ask now, when he felt his career was sliding inexorably towards its end? It was only done as recreational. It's the stuff of dreams," he added. I’d been through a torrid time and I can probably say for a single race it was the biggest thrill.’This year’s could be an even greater one. With the onset of the pandemic, he had had to wait for over two months until he could race competitively again – he won at Kempton Park on a horse called Galsworthy.‘The bizarre thing was coming in after having won a race and there was nobody there,’ he says. And once you’re past that and into the straight you’re free to go, and at that stage half of the field has gone and you have a pretty good idea if you can win it or not.’Normally 130,000 people attend the Derby. In the normal course of events he has a nutritionist who guides his eating habits: ‘lots of salads, yogurt, nuts and white meat – I probably only have steaks twice a year’.But he enjoys cooking, and for the first couple of weeks of lockdown he would cook a family dinner. So as you flatten off at the mile, from there to the five-furlong pole, that’s the point where you’re asking the horse to relax and get its breath back, filling those massive lungs full of oxygen.‘And then you’re coming down the hill, around Tattenham Corner, and you know if you have a shot at it or you got no shot. His fellow jockey Jamie Spencer – nine years younger – accuses him of dyeing his hair. But the incident in France would lead to a six-month ban.Dettori’s world crashed around his ears. It’s the best race in the world. His mother, Mara, was a circus performer – a juggler, contortionist, horse rider and foil for a blindfolded knife-thrower – who at the age of 16 was swept off her feet by a young jockey named Gianfranco Dettori.Mara had no interest in horse racing and Gianfranco was busy building his career – he would go on to win the Italian riding championship 13 times. ‘To be honest with you, if I don’t do it now I get booed,’ he says with a laugh. Thank God I could ride horses!’The only thing that kept him sane through it all, he says, was being able to spend four days a week at the stables of his trainer John Gosden nearby. And now that I’m nearly 50 I’m thinking, why would I retire?’ Lester Piggott, he reminds you, continued riding until he was 58.Retirement is not, Dettori admits, a prospect that he relishes. A tall story: How Peter Crouch become a national treasure in-waiting He thinks about this.
Xand Van Tulleken: 'Doctors had to restart my heart – while we were filming' ‘I came into the winner’s enclosure and there was just me and the trainer.’But despite the changes enforced on racing, including the jockeys wearing face masks, Dettori’s delight in being back is palpable. If I was travelling I’d lay everything on my bed – I had my lucky tie, my lucky pants – I took everything with me. This year, of course, the stands will be empty. Help us build our profile of Catherine Dettori! Then suddenly I’m locked in the house with my lovely children and wife, but there have been times they wanted to kill me and I wanted to kill them. The Middle East circuit starts at the end of January, and for much of the next three months he is in Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Qatar, until the end of March when the flat-racing season resumes in England.
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