It’s final, it seems. Frankie Dettori, one of the greatest jockeys ever to ride a race horse, will retire after Saturday’s Breeders’ Cup. His last ride in the U.S., as things stand, will be the Mitsumasa Nakauchida-trained Argine for Japan in the Mile, a race he has won twice before – the first of those on Barathea in 1994 was his first Breeders’ Cup win.
“Following the Breeders’ Cup on Saturday I will be retiring from race-riding in the United States and concluding my career with a few rides in South America, something I’ve always wanted to do,” his statement on X said.
“It has been an honour to compete at the highest level of this sport for over four decades,” he continued, and thanked his family and everyone who has supported him.
Idol Horse understands the 54-year-old is in discussions to take up a role with a leading ownership operation, opening the possibility that he and wife Catherine Dettori relocate from the United States back to England where he made his name.
The news comes two years after the Italian legend put in a retirement U-turn, 10 months into his 12-month farewell tour. Instead of hanging up his boots, he packed them in a suitcase and relocated to the U.S., taking his famous flying dismounts first to Southern California and then back east to Kentucky and New York.
That backtrack was met with gladness among his fans and relief across the sport that one of its prized assets would not be lost just yet. But now the time has come: the man who might well be the last truly famous Thoroughbred jockey outside of Japan, a world in which horse racing’s relevance and popularity seems to be ever-receding, will no longer thrill fans with his brilliance in the saddle and his ebullience in victory.
Dettori’s move to the U.S. in late 2023 had already robbed racing in Britain of its one true star. He had crossed over into the mainstream British consciousness – perhaps the last jockey to do so – in September 1997 when he won his ‘magnificent seven’ races in one day, a result that hit bookmakers hard and gained both national and international attention.
The following year he was the subject of the primetime ITV show This Is Your Life; for two years in the early 2000’s he was a team captain on the BBC’s popular sports quiz show A Question of Sport; in 2013 he entered the Celebrity Big Brother house; and two years ago he spent almost two weeks in the jungle as a contestant on I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out Of Here.
He was even made an honorary MBE (Most Excellent Order of the British Empire) by Queen Elizabeth II in 2001 for ‘services to racing.’
But there was also the horror and tragedy of the plane crash at Newmarket in 2000 in which the pilot Patrick Mackey died and Dettori and fellow jockey Ray Cochrane barely escaped. That made the mainstream daily headlines, as did his unwelcome six-month ban handed down by French stewards in 2012 for a failed drugs test, and his split from Godolphin in October that same year.
More recently came the news in 2025 that he had filed for bankruptcy in Britain, the result of a failure to reach agreement in a legal dispute with His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs (HMRC) over a tax avoidance scheme.
The son of Italian champion Gianfranco Dettori moved to England as a teenager and was apprenticed to trainer Luca Cumani in Newmarket. Champion apprentice in 1989 at age 19, his first Group 1 win came on Markofdistinction in the 1990 Queen Elizabeth II Stakes, and in forging a partnership subsequently with trainer John Gosden through the early 1990s he established a firm connection with Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum which saw him appointed first jockey to the new Godolphin operation.
Dettori was largely unstoppable in the Godolphin blue and the set-up’s global approach spread his fame around the world. He was champion jockey in Britain three times in his career and partnered some of the sport’s most famous horses, notably the great Dubai Millennium, Shamardal, Lammtarra, Swain, Fantastic Light, Daylami, Halling, Singspiel, Lochsong, Sakhee, Ouija Board, Dubawi, Golden Horn, Stradivarius and Enable.
He won 23 English classic races including the Derby in 2007 and 2015; the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe six times and the King George VI and Queen Elizabeth Stakes seven times; the Japan Cup three times; the Dubai World Cup four times; and he also numbers 14 Breeders’ Cup wins among the more than 200 Group 1 wins his career has yielded.
Dettori retires as one of the all-time greats, but racing is losing more than a sublime jockey and outstanding athlete, it is losing an important link to the masses. ∎
