'I'm not kicking jockeys off horses - owners come to me and ask me to ride'
Julian Muscat finds the top jockey super-excited by what lies in store at Epsom
Initially, Frankie Dettori is delighted when it is put to him that he dominates the Derby build-up like a modern-day Lester Piggott.
“Yes!” says the man who won the Derby for the second time on Golden Horn seven years ago. Then he spots the hidden tripwire and he bursts out laughing.
Last year Dettori was parachuted on to John Leeper’s back at the 11th hour, as he had been 12 months previously when he supplanted Tom Marquand aboard the favourite, English King. This time Gavin Ryan is the hapless victim as Dettori takes over on Piz Badile, a proper dark horse owned by the Niarchos’s Flaxman Stables.
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Copy- 'You probably only get five proper darts at a big race each year, so you have to deliver - and I think I've got a massive chance'
- ‘I’ve never had to deal with that in my career and I did find it hard - you start asking yourself what you’re doing wrong’
- ‘I’ll be there to see the kids open their presents but then it’s a coffee, bang, out the door’ - life in a racing yard at Christmas
- ‘I miss the craic of going racing but it’s a young person’s game these days - and I don’t know how they survive, to be honest’
- 'I don't want to be part of this narrative that Irish trainers are better than us - I think that's rubbish, it drives me nuts'
- 'You probably only get five proper darts at a big race each year, so you have to deliver - and I think I've got a massive chance'
- ‘I’ve never had to deal with that in my career and I did find it hard - you start asking yourself what you’re doing wrong’
- ‘I’ll be there to see the kids open their presents but then it’s a coffee, bang, out the door’ - life in a racing yard at Christmas
- ‘I miss the craic of going racing but it’s a young person’s game these days - and I don’t know how they survive, to be honest’
- 'I don't want to be part of this narrative that Irish trainers are better than us - I think that's rubbish, it drives me nuts'