Executives at Ascot and Goodwood will have their fingers firmly crossed on Tuesday morning as Frankie Dettori, racing’s most bankable performer, attempts to overturn or reduce a 10-day suspension for careless riding which was imposed after a Group Two contest at Newmarket on 13 July.
If the 10-day ban remains intact, Dettori will miss both afternoons of the King George meeting at Ascot, which opens this Friday, and all five days at Glorious Goodwood next week, when he is due to ride the favourite in two of the meeting’s three Group One events. Without Parole, the St James’s Palace Stakes winner, will need a new jockey in the Sussex Stakes, as will Stradivarius, who is closing in on a £1m bonus for winning four of the season’s best staying races, when he lines up for the Goodwood Cup.
Both horses are trained by John Gosden, whose stable has underpinned Dettori’s renaissance at the highest level after his split with the Godolphin operation in the autumn of 2012 and a subsequent six-month ban following a positive test for cocaine the same year. The two horses were also Group One winners at the Royal meeting last month, which offered the latest reminder of Dettori’s swagger and stage presence at the sport’s most prestigious events. He did not, in fact, finish the week as the leading rider but it certainly felt that way.
Ascot is the course with which Dettori is most closely associated, but it is Glorious Goodwood that will not seem the same for many punters and spectators if Dettori is sidelined. In addition to his high-profile rides in Group One races, he would start the meeting with 194 career victories at the course where he rode his first winner 31 years ago as a 16-year-old apprentice, and an outside chance to reach 200 by the end of the five days.
Dettori was riding Gosden’s filly Angel’s Hideaway in the Duchess Of Cambridge Stakes at Newmarket’s July meeting when she started to drift right inside the final quarter-mile of the six‑furlong race. Angel’s Hideaway first impeded Chicas Amigas, and then, following a left-handed crack of the whip from her rider, interfered more significantly with La Pelosa and Main Edition towards the stands’ rail.
Dettori’s mount went on to finish second behind the front-running winner Pretty Pollyanna while La Pelosa and Main Edition, the favourite and second-favourite respectively, finished fifth and seventh.
The three-strong panel hearing the appeal on Tuesday will, of course, concern itself only with the facts of the matter and ignore Dettori’s pulling power when it comes to spectators and viewing figures. But this is a case that seems to have divided racing fans and professionals alike, with as many feeling that the jockey has been harshly treated, in the length of his suspension at least, as believe that it was justified by the circumstances.
The former jockey George Baker, for instance, said that he felt it was “a shocking decision” when commenting on the race for Racing UK. he’s got 10 days for that.”
The trainer John Berry, though, took a different view on At The Races’ Sunday Forum programme. “I read that Frankie was disappointed with the penalty,” Berry said, “but imagine in his heart of hearts, he is probably more disappointed with himself. If it’s careless riding, it was at the top end of careless riding and if that’s what the penalty is at the top end, it’s a correct penalty.”
The British Horseracing Authority’s latest guide to procedures and penalties suggests that an offence of careless riding could attract a penalty ranging from a caution to 14 days.
That gives the appeal panel plenty of leeway when deciding whether to reduce Dettori’s ban, though he would need to have it reduced to just four days in order to ride Stradivarius in the Goodwood Cup on Tuesday week. That would also leave him free to ride in Saturday’s King George at Ascot, as bans of four days or less can be deferred on days when there is a Group One race, though Gosden’s top colt Cracksman is considered a doubtful runner this weekend due to the prevailing fast ground.
Paddy Power have seen money for Dettori’s full 10-day ban to be upheld in recent days, with an initial offer of 15-8 subsequently cut to 11-10, while any reduction in Dettori’s suspension is 8-13 from 4-9. It promises to be a lively and fiercely-fought hearing when proceedings commence at 9.30am on Tuesday.
Newcastle 1.40 Lawmaking 2.10 Louis Treize 2.40 Zig Zag 3.15 Hamlul 3.45 M C Muldoon 4.20 Supreme Power 4.50 First Breath 5.20 Kyllachy Dragon
Ffos Las 2.00 Operative 2.30 Elegant Love 3.05 Anchises 3.35 Advanced Virgo 4.10 Souriyan 4.40 Ellen Gates 5.10 Jashma
Musselburgh 2.20 Twilight 2.50 Dancing On A Dream 3.25 Landing Night 3.55 Different Journey 4.30 Jacob Black 5.00 Great Fighter
5.35 Pavers Pride
Nottingham 5.30 Optima Petamus 6.00 Mayson Mac 6.30 Lexington Place 7.00 Zip Along 7.30 Kalagia 8.00 Mischievous Rock 8.30 Dream Serenade
Chelmsford City 6.10 Master Poet 6.40 Moyassar 7.10 Ekhtiyaar (nb)
7.40 Tum Tum 8.10 Piece Of History 8.40 Real Estate (nap) 9.10 Sanam
