Dettori feels heat after Stradivarius bid foiled
Gosden questions jockey’s Gold Cup waiting tactics Kyprios cashes in to land O’brien’s eighth win in race
at Ascot
This has been a nightmare June for Frankie Dettori and though he has shared some wonderful times with Stradivarius, yesterday might not have been his finest hour, as the eight-year-old narrowly failed in his attempt to win a record-equalling fourth Gold Cup.
Stradivarius was beaten by Aidan O’brien’s favourite, Kyprios, by a length and a quarter into third. It was too close to say that he might not have won had things panned out differently, but not far enough to write him off as a has-been.
But after Emily Upjohn tripped over coming out of the stall in the Oaks to be beaten by a nose and the hood failing to come off Lord North in the previous day’s Prince of Wales’s Stakes, it has not been Dettori’s month on John Gosden’s horses. If that is bad luck, he has accumulated quite a lot of it lately, and while Dettori’s seven-timer at Ascot in 1996 showed what the Italian can do on the crest of the confidence wave, this might be more a case of what he cannot do when uncertainty takes over.
For goodness sake, someone just give him a winner.
If connections were hoping yesterday for a repeat of any of Stradivarius’s first three successes in Royal Ascot’s most prestigious race, it was pretty obvious from body language alone afterwards that they felt they got a repeat that was closer to last year’s fourth, when Dettori got too far out of his ground.
“Why did you get so far back?” was Gosden’s first question to Dettori on dismounting. While everyone else had been quickening up, he was already the fly looking for a way out of the spider’s web, having to make his way sideways, across the apex of the bend, to the outside for a clear run. Once out in the open, having gone round the two horses which beat him, he flew, but it was too little too late.
The pace was pedestrian for the first two miles, so a red light should have lit up on Dettori’s dashboard warning of a potential hazard ahead on the home bend when even the
dead wood in the race would still be in vague contention.
Yes, two or three years ago Stradivarius might have picked up the first and second – both Kyprios and the runner-up Mojo Star are half his age – but nowadays, the old chestnut probably needs to, at least, set off on level terms with them when the sprint for the line begins.
Gosden is far too diplomatic and loyal to criticise his jockey in public, but he came as close to it as he will ever get. “I think there was no real pace,” he said. “I was a bit surprised from having been in the box seat that we dropped back so far. The problem is when they sprint, you had to come wide to get a run, and he had to come widest of all. He had a chance the last furlong, and the race slipped on him.”
“Stradivarius is a great horse to get here and to now run in five Gold Cups. He came back in and had a neigh, so he seems happy. Great credit to the horse and the owner/ breeder to keep him racing. There are younger horses there that are first and second. I just wish we had been a little handier and not had to go through a wall of horses.”
Dettori said: “The younger horses had more legs than me at the end. I had every chance to get them, but they were stronger than me. I had to pull out wide and the only place I could go was the outside and everything was getting tight.
“When I’ve pulled him out plenty of times, usually he’s got the electric turn of foot, but he’s not four anymore, he’s eight. I laboured a bit at the end, and I was never going to get them. He has been a star. You have to pass on the baton to the younger ones. He did his best and we’re very proud of him.”
To be fair to Dettori, even Ryan Moore on Kyprios described it as a messy race. “It wasn’t a nice race to ride,” he said. “I didn’t like the position I was in. I knew I had Frankie on my inside and they were going slow up front. I had to move him to the outside and I don’t like doing that, but I felt I had to keep Kyprios going. It wasn’t a true test today. I don’t think we saw the best of him. It was a more complicated race than it should have been. I think Kyprios was much the best.”
The winner was Aidan O’brien’s eighth Gold Cup winner. He will be back in a year’s time, but there was no immediate decision on the future of Stradivarius.