News needs to be special if it is going to knock the horses off the top spot, even for a short while, during Breeders' Cup week. The story which was able to do that was the announcement of Frankie Dettori's imminent retirement and his plans for the future. That is understandable because Frankie has been big news throughout his fabulous career.Arriving in Newmarket aged 14 in 1985 to join the stable of his compatriot Luca Cumani, Frankie was already an experienced and race-winning rider in Italy by the time he turned 16. It was a tough induction into the British racing world for a young boy who didn't speak English, but Frankie thrived. He was (and is) very likeable, which always helps. And he had a supportive boss. The association between the Cumani and Dettori families went back years thanks to Frankie's father Gianfranco, a multiple champion jockey in Italy who rode there for Luca's father Sergio and who had ridden the Italian-owned but Henry Cecil-trained 2,000 Guineas winners Wollow and Bolkonski in the 1970s. Gianfranco also rode Cumani's first winner (Three Legs in the G3 Duke Of York Stakes) when Luca set up as a trainer in Newmarket in 1976.Frankie rode his first British winner (for Cumani) on Lizzy Hare at Goodwood in May 1987, aged 16. Within two and a half years he was Britain's reigning champion apprentice with the first of his countless Group race victories under his belt, having guided the Cumani-trained Legal Case to victory in the G3 Select Stakes at Goodwood.Cumani's stable jockey at the time was Ray Cochrane. It was a solid partnership, based on mutual respect. It was a successful one too, the pair's shared victories including the Derby and Irish Derby triumphs of Kahyasi in 1988, Legal Case's Champion Stakes success the following year, Ensconse's win in that year's Irish 1,000 Guineas, and a splendid Grade I double at Woodbine in 1988 when Infamy won the GI Canadian International and Oaks runner-up Sudden Love took the GI E. P. Taylor Stakes. However, so stunning was Frankie's emergence as a top-class jockey that by 1990 the writing was on the wall.That year Frankie enjoyed an eye-catching series of big-race triumphs on Cumani's horses. The highlight was a Group 1 double at what was then the Festival of British Racing at Ascot (a short-lived forerunner of QIPCO British Champions' Day) on Gerald Leigh's Markofdistinction in the Queen Elizaeth II Stakes and Sheikh Mohammed's Shamshir in the Fillies' Mile. Three months previously he had won the Queen Anne Stakes (then a Group 2) at Royal Ascot on Markofdistinction, a race which Cochrane had won for Cumani three years previously on Then Again. He ended the year in fourth place in the jockeys' table with 149 wins, 60 wins behind the champion Pat Eddery. This made him the first teenager since Lester Piggott to ride 100 or more winners in a British season.A top apprentice's transition to senior jockey is never guaranteed but Frankie's had been seamless. Lester Piggott's great career was finally drawing to a close and Frankie seemed destined to step into his 'Greatest Jockey' slot. However, the process turned out not to be plain sailing.Early in the 1990s, British racing was undergoing one of its intermittent crises of confidence, prompted in general by an economic recession and specifically by concerns that the sport was being disadvantaged by a much higher rate of VAT than those which applied in other countries. Compounding this from Frankie's point of view was that Cumani's stable was hit by the loss of several major owners, most notably the Aga Khan. Seemingly fearing that his best British days might already be behind him (at the age of 22!), Frankie signed a contract to ride in Hong Kong for the 1993/'94 season, not just for a temporary period over the winter but full-time. He omitted to tell Cumani of his decision and consequently lost his job. He then lost the Hong Kong job too (before it had started) when he was arrested and cautioned by police in April 1993 for possession of cocaine.Frankie could have fallen by the wayside. However, 'come the moment, come the man', helped in his case by two very different trainers. The maverick Irish professional punter Barney Curley, a devout Catholic who trained a small string of moderate horses in Newmarket, took him under his wing, becoming a father-figure and valued friend to a young man who seemed in danger of becoming a lost soul. And John Gosden provided the backing of a major stable that a jockey generally needs to maintain his position in the major league.By this time, Sheikh Mohammed was well established as Europe's most successful owner. In Britain he had horses with most of the leading trainers, including Henry Cecil, Michael Stoute, John Dunlop, Luca Cumani and John Gosden. Times were changing, though, and Sheikh Mohammed set up his elite 'Godolphin' string, which would contain his best horses, initially under the stewardship of Hilal Ibrahim and then Saeed bin Suroor. During the 1994 season Frankie became Godolphin's jockey and would remain so for the next 18 years, synonymous with the royal blue livery and synonymous with top-level success.Frankie had 'buckled down' and his work-rate was prodigious, riding for Godolphin and for pretty much everyone else too. It helped that he had become the regular rider for the hugely popular Jeff Smith-owned, Ian Balding-trained champion sprinter Lochsong. He ended 1994 as champion jockey with the phenomenal total of 233 wins, a tally previously exceeded only by Fred Archer (in 1884 and 1885) and Sir Gordon Richards (in 1933, 1947 and 1949). His triumphs that year included wins on the Saeed bin Suroor-trained Balanchine in the Oaks and Irish Derby, and, most happily, on the Sheikh Mohammed-owned, Luca Cumani-trained Barathea in the Breeders' Cup Mile.Frankie was champion again in 1995, with 211 wins. He was utterly dominant and Bin Suroor's small team was outstandingly successful, their shared wins that year including the King George VI And Queen Elizabeth Stakes and Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe with Lammtarra, the Oaks with Moonshell and the Gold Cup with Classic Cliche. This glut of top-class success persuaded Frankie to concentrate henceforth on quality (rather than on both quality and quantity) and he ceased to target the jockeys' championship (although he did subsequently become champion for a third time, in 2004).Even though no longer Britain's champion, he remained Europe's dominant jockey, and its most famously ebullient one too. There were far too many highlights to list, far too many victories worthy of one of his trademark 'flying dismounts', although some have to be mentioned. Topping the list has to be his 'Magnificent Seven' on September 28, 1996 when he went through the card on a seven-race Group 1 programme at Ascot, followed perhaps by the wide-margin Dubai World Cup victory in 2000 in the Godolphin blue of the mighty Dubai Millennium, the best horse Sheikh Mohammed has ever owned or bred. He even continued to enjoy the occasional great day with Cumani, winning two Japan Cups (on Falbrav and Alkaased) within four years early in the current century. Furthermore, he finally ticked the one remaining box that really mattered when winning the Derby in 2007 on the Peter Chapple-Hyam-trained Authorized.Eventually Bin Suroor began to be marginalised within the Godolphin organisation and his jockey did too. Even though Frankie ceased to ride for Godolphin, he was still supported by his ever-loyal ally Gosden, notably enjoying an annus mirabilis on the Derby- and Arc-winning Horse of the Year Golden Horn in 2015. Further fabulous partnerships with the great racemare Enable and the outstanding stayer Stradivarius were to follow. Even when he eventually decided to 'retire' (which turned out to mean merely no longer riding in Europe but, instead, relocating to the USA in December 2023), he rode six winners in his first two weeks in California and then landed the Santa Anita Handicap in March 2024 on the Bob Baffert-trained Newgate.Frankie will turn 55 next month and has decided that it is time for the curtain to come down on his magnificent career (although he will have a few rides in South America, just to fill in a rare gap on his bulging CV). This, of course, won't be the final chapter in his remarkable odyssey because his forthcoming link with Amo Racing is surely a story waiting to be told. He is a one-off and so is Kia Joorabchian and, the pair put together, anything could happen.Frankie has entertained us in and out of the saddle for nearly 40 years. Working in the future with Amo, further glory surely still awaits one of the sport's all-time greats.The post Frankie Dettori: Entertaining Us In and Out of the Saddle for Nearly 40 Years appeared first on TDN | Thoroughbred Daily News | Horse Racing News, Results and Video | Thoroughbred Breeding and Auctions.