The turf
The confidence factor
Robin Oakley
Frankie Dettori not only puts the joie into joie de vivre, he helps us all take a little out of the bookies' satchels. One tortured soul on the rails at Ascot last Saturday was going 'nine to four Dettori's mount and nine to four me for the Labour exchange'. To have had to leave as I did en route to the Labour Party Conference after he had ridden just five of his seven winners was like being dragged out of Headingley with Ian Both= scarcely in the thirties of a match-winning century, or being dragged out of your chair at Chez Nico before the arrival of the entrée. The applauding thou- sands who stayed to witness the final flying dismount from Fujiyama Crest will have an `I was there' story to tell for the rest of their lives.
Even now, I suspect, the sheer quality of Frankie's achievement has not been fully digested. Alec Russell's remarkable record of riding six winners in a day had stood since 1957. But his six were rattled up on a standard day's racing at Bogside. Dettori's seven were accumulated at the Ascot Festi- val of Racing, across as competitive a card as we have seen all season. The cumulative odds were 25,091-1, even after the frantic hedging on his later mounts had brought their prices down to totally unrealistic levels.
Wall Street, his first winner, was 2-1 favourite but no easy ride. Many had ques- tioned whether Wall Street was really bred to last a mile and a half, so to lead all the way and beat a horse as good as Salmon Ladder in the final challenge required a truly sensitive judgment of pace.
In the second race, Frankie was lucky, Walter Swinburn's mount Lucayan Prince has to be covered up and produced only in the dying strides. Swinburn was sitting on a whole lot of horse but he encountered traf- fic problems as he came to challenge. Two strides beyond the line he was in front, but at the jamstick it was Dettori on Diffident who had prevailed. While Diffident came from the all-conquering Godolphin opera- tion he was scarcely one of their stars, hav- ing run a stinker to finish last behind Gabr at Newmarket on his previous appearance. His 12-1 price was if anything rather cramped odds but Dettori's driving crouch, clamped to the horse's neck as if man and horse were one being, somehow got him to the line in time.
Third was the big race. Mark of Esteem's success in the Queen Elizabeth Stakes. No doubt there that Frankie Dettori was on the best horse. Mark of Esteem had looked superb in the paddock and his acceleration when he came to take the lovely filly Bosra Sham, the pair of them clear of most of the best milers in Europe, was awe-inspiring. But Dettori had obeyed Sheikh Mohammed's 'wait and wait' instructions to the letter, something which takes a real cool head in that class of race.
By the time of the fourth race, the hotly competitive Tote Festival Handicap, pun- ters had realised Dettori was on a roll. In came the price for his mount, Decorated Hero, from 12-1 to 7-1, a totally 'unfair' hate the amount of packaging that food comes wrapped in these days.' price for a horse carrying top weight of 9st 13Ib (including a 51b penalty) in such a seven-furlong cavalry charge. He manoeu- vred his mount across from a dreaded far- side draw and went clear at the furlong pole for his most comfortable victory of the day. 'Don't touch me — I'm on fire,' Det- tori jokingly told a fan who reached out to pat him, and clearly in that way which truly great jockeys have of imparting to their mounts the strength of their own confi- dence he had got the message through to Decorated Hero.
Confidence is the key. You need confi- dence in timing a challenge, confidence in how much you can ask of a mount, confi- dence in when to go for a diminishing gap. And even the irrepressibly bubbly Dettori has had to work for that confidence. I remember him declaring of a comeback ride after injury how he had doubted him- self just for a moment and wondered if the old responses would he there. Remember that this is a man who shattered his elbow earlier this season and whom many had expected scarcely to be riding again by now, let alone riding like the angel on God's chariot.
Inevitably, Fatefully in the fifth came in from 11-2 in the morning books to 7-4 favourite. Weaving through the pack and again taking it up at the furlong pole, Det- tori occasioned a stewards' inquiry by acci- dentally interfering with Questionia but kept the race after just holding off the effort of Abeyr on a rapidly tiring horse.
In the sixth, the trainer Ian Balding had told him to drop in behind on co-favourite Lochangel and bide his time. Instead, Frankie took the filly into the lead and stayed there all the way, the sort of move which is praised as confidence when you win and condemned as cockiness when you lose. But it was in the last race on Fujiyama Quest that the confidence factor was really confirmed.
There was no reason for his mount to be in with a chance at all. It had not won this season. It had not run since finishing tailed off second last in June and again it was humping top weight of 9st 10Ib. Again Det- tori made all the pace and somehow saw off for the third time in the day a finishing challenge by the ten-times champion jockey Pat Eddery. If connections really had been planning something for this race, one can only feel sorry for them landing it at a starting price of 2-1 when 20-1 would have been more realistic.
Dettori's. feat was all the more enjoyable for its sheer bravura, the rapport which he established with the crowd. Bookmakers' bodies may be floating down the Thames, the egos of a few other little men may have been irreparably dented. But last Satur- day's seven-timer can only be good news for racing. Every sport needs its superstars and racing now has one to fetch in the crowds.
Robin Oakley is political editor of the BBC.
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