Dettori and Son

I know that, if it weren’t for Dad, I wouldn’t be who I am today. I forced myself to be successful because of him.

Really, one should start with the grandfather.

Mario Dettori, five foot two inches of muscle, was born into Sardinian poverty and worked in the mines. After the war, in which he saw action at Monte Casino and was imprisoned, he became a builder. One day Gianfranco, his son, born nearly eighty-two years ago, told him he was leaving the family firm. ‘Get lost, then’, said Mario.

The boy, as he still was, went to Rome and washed dishes amongst other jobs. By chance he got work looking after horses. Then he discovered he could ride. He became Italy’s most successful jockey ever with thirteen championships. He also won the 2000 Guineas twice, and the Eclipse, and rode Wollow, the 11/10 favourite for the ‘76 Derby, coming fifth.

Gianfranco took his son, Lanfranco, aged six, to a pony club. ‘You have to stay here’. ‘Why?’, asked the boy. ‘Because I say so’.

The relationship between father and son was thus established. It hasn’t changed, except that the son, maintaining a family tradition, has learned to argue back.

‘You’re going to England to work for Luca Cumani’, ordered the still uncontradicted father. Lanfranco, aged fourteen, flew to England alone, with a tag around his neck.

In the yard, where he was called Frankie for the first time, he was either bullied or ignored. There was an arrangement whereby his father called him once a week, on Mondays at 7.00 pm. It was half an hour of love and support, with Frankie crying most of the time. The rest of the week, he was on his own. That was what Gianfranco wanted. Frankie started to learn English.

Four years later he was appointed stable jockey.

When Frankie was caught with cocaine the dad went ballistic. He rushed to London and started bothering the best solicitors and drug counsellors. With his son’s career stumbling badly, Gianfranco, to Frankie’s slight alarm, upped sticks and moved in.

The next season Frankie rode over 200 winners, but the domestic arrangements were creating problems…

Dad’s always on my case. You should have done this, you should have done that … he never knows when to leave well alone.

Most nights, the rows and the shouting continued until the early hours. Frankie told his father to ‘go back to Italy’. They didn’t speak for a year.

Stubborn stand-offs became a theme of the relationship. Reconciliation always happened, followed quickly by renewed hostility. When Frankie was nearly killed in a plane crash he hadn’t seen or talked to Gianfranco for over eighteen months. Within a few hours, the father, hotfoot from Italy, showed up at the hospital.

Decades earlier, whilst busy fighting with Mario, Gianfranco had won a race for a billionaire owner. He was gifted a watch, but one so valuable that Gianfranco never wore it. In a rare serene moment, before Frankie moved to England, he showed the watch to his son and told him that if he ever won the Derby he could have it.

No matter how much we might argue and fight, he’s my dad, I’m his son and we love each other.

Frankie had won everything, except the Derby. He tried fourteen times, then it happened. His father flew in. The watch had been engraved: Lanfranco Dettori, Authorized, Epsom Derby, Saturday 2nd June, 2007. Frankie doesn’t wear it either.

It’s a symbol of so much, not just a reward. It reminds me of where I came from.

In the complicated, frustrating and illogical world of paternity, Gianfranco will, in the end, be happy. He was brilliant and his son was better. Simple.