With apologies to Jamie Spencer, here's why racing is clinging to Frankie
The Guardian's Jonathan Liew interviewed Wayne Mardle earlier this week. It was there, 13 paragraphs in, that it dawned on me: there will never be another Frankie Dettori. They might be better, but they won't be louder.
"I wanted to be a clown," Mardle, once the fifth-best darts player in the world and now a Sky Sports commentator, told Liew.
"I don't think anyone wants to be a clown any more. It is frowned upon. Players are afraid of letting their guard down. You go up there, you concentrate, you do not muck around, you play to win. Peter Wright, Dimitri van den Bergh, Michael van Gerwen, Gerwyn Price, that's as close as we've got today. But as for me and Bobby [George], I don't think that'll happen ever again."
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