Frankie's Magnificent Seven: 'It cost us £40 million - but it was an investment'

In any walk of life, there are game-changers, and then there are game-changers. There are people who have the ability to send tremors through their chosen field, and then there are people whose stature and reputation can quickly turn those tremors seismic, until they rattle the living-room windows of the world beyond. In sport it's no different, but in the world of racing, if anybody is going to become ground zero for an earth-trembling event, it's going to be Frankie Dettori.

Lester Piggott was always the 'housewives' favourite', and to the extent that anybody moved markets in the pre-digital age, he moved them, especially on the first Wednesday in June at Epsom throughout the 1970s. However, with the advent of celebrity culture the possibilities for a mass happening in the off-course arena rippled outwards into a realm where disaster for the layers was always a looming spectre.

This was a time of growth for the gambling industry, when the seediness of the backstreet betting shop was being scrubbed clean by legislation and social change. Tea, coffee and live pictures had been legalised in bookies' parlours in 1986; the advent of the National Lottery in 1994 had lent a new veneer of respectability to gambling; the once-a-year housewife was being replaced by the recreational punter, who loved a flutter on the horses.