Читать книгу Frankie: The Autobiography of Frankie Dettori - Frankie Dettori - Страница 6

As a small boy I wanted to be a petrol pump attendant when I grew up. Well, the price of petrol was very high then. It seemed like a rewarding career. Later I fancied myself as a professional footballer, but it was my destiny to become a jockey. My dad Gianfranco was champion jockey thirteen times in Italy and also won lots of big races in England, but he didn’t sit on a horse until he was twenty and stumbled into racing by chance after he left the family home in Sardinia to seek fame and fortune on the mainland.

His father Mario, my grandfather, had an iron will. He stood little more than 5ft 2in tall and came from a family who were often penniless. He was a man’s man—tough, stubborn, hard as nails—and could be an absolute bastard. We all called him Super Mario and you will soon understand why. He was doing odd building jobs, earning money where he could—sometimes in the mines at Carbonia—when Italy became involved in the Second World War in June 1941 as an ally of Germany.

Soon the Germans were everywhere in Sardinia with several army barracks, but at least there was no fighting on the island. Once my grandfather joined the Italian Army he was based full-time in barracks, which was a bit of a problem because his wife Apollonia lived thirty miles away from the camp. He used to tell me stories of how he cycled over to see her whenever he was free. Since the tyres on the bicycle were old and worn, his journey would often be interrupted by punctures which he mended with the crudest of equipment.

Mario’s love for my grandmother cost him dear. When he failed to return to camp in time one Monday morning he was put on a charge and locked in a cell for a month. The second time it happened they tied him to a pole in the middle of a courtyard and left him there for several days, maybe a week. Ants creeping all over his body made him so itchy that they nearly drove him mad. In desperation he shook the pole so hard that it broke and came crashing down and he was put in a cell once more. You might think that he had learned his lesson by then, but the Dettoris are resolute in matters of the heart. Once he’d completed his sentence he rushed off for a reunion with my grandmother and failed to return to barracks before the curfew yet again.

This time there was no escaping serious punishment. Mario was immediately sent to the front at Montecassino early in 1944, where one of the fiercest battles of the war was raging around the famous monastery—which was eventually destroyed by Allied bombers after months of heavy fighting. It came at the point in the war when the Allies were trying to drive the Germans out of Italy. Casualties were horribly high in the battle for Montecassino, south of Rome. It was a bloodbath. Mario told me he spent six months crouching in the trenches there and escaped with no more than a small scratch on his arm from a stray bullet.

The way he told it to me years later, rain fell for weeks on end and the only way he managed to keep himself from sinking into the mud at night was by sleeping on a lilo in the trenches. He smoked incessantly, and quickly learned never to put his head above the parapet—for the very good reason that those who did immediately came under fire, often with fatal results.

Once Italy was liberated by the Allies, Mario returned home to Sardinia and started working in the local mines at Carbonia which supplied coal for much of the mainland. Since he was a builder he had the perilous job of erecting a barrier with bricks and cement at great speed to stop fire spreading whenever it broke out. This required great skill and courage because he was obviously the last man out when a fire started. Mining was much more primitive then and he saved quite a few lives.

My grandparents had six children, all boys, but one died at birth. Pepe was the oldest followed by Gianfranco, Salvatore, Sandro, and finally Sergio. Eventually Mario left the mines and began his own building business, though there were months at a time when he was unemployed. As the boys grew up and left school they all began working for him. My dad remained at school until he was sixteen, which was like going to university in those days in such a poor community.

My dad was pretty cute and soon realised there was more to life than toiling away for his father for ten hours or more a day, mixing cement for the modest reward of just a bowl of pasta with beans and a roof over his head. After months of hard labour he couldn’t see any sort of future. So, one day, with huge blisters on his hands, he hurled his bucket and shovel into a well and informed my grandfather that he was leaving home. Mario’s response was typical: as my dad walked away he heard Mario shouting that he needn’t bother to return.

Gianfranco just about had the price of a ticket for the ferry that took him to the mainland. He headed for Rome and stayed with one of his brothers until he found a job washing plates in a restaurant. Soon he moved on to a second restaurant where he lived in the cellar with his sparse belongings. These he kept on a shelf to avoid the attention of rats. When it poured with rain one night, the cellar flooded and everything he owned was swept away.

Dad was left with nothing, but you are resilient at that age and all he cared about at the time was chasing the girls and smoking cigarettes. He was just exploring life and worked like hell to pay for his fun. He switched from washing dishes to selling fruit and veg at a market stall. This also involved making home deliveries, a job that offered unexpectedly exciting perks from some of the housewives he met on his daily rounds.

My dad was smart, had a bit of charm and an easy smile. He was hungry for life and kept moving on, looking for a break. One of the stall holders was a policeman who also owned three trotting horses, stabled at Tor di Valle racecourse in Rome. Soon Dad began looking after these three horses, even though at first, he didn’t have a clue what to do with them. He learned by asking and watching other lads at nearby stables, and within a week he was quite efficient at attaching the horses to the sulky, which is the little chariot used in trotting. He was also feeding the horses and mucking them out twice a day, throwing out the manure, adding fresh straw, and brushing around their stables.

He did this all by himself in return for an unlimited supply of cigarettes, as many packs as he could puff his way through. He was small, stocky, extremely fit and bright enough to realise that there wasn’t much money in looking after trotting horses. Some friends suggested he switch to the Capannelle, then the home of Italian horse racing. So he turned up there, offered his services to the first trainer he met, and at the age of eighteen signed up as an apprentice for five years—even though he’d never sat on a horse in his life. It was the start of an odyssey that would make him the most successful jockey in the history of Italian racing.

In those days an apprentice in racing was not much more than a slave, expected to do all the hard, dirty, dangerous and menial jobs for minimal reward. In the first few months he toiled away, cleaning out stables, sweeping the yard, and feeding the horses without so much as climbing onto their backs. The opportunity he craved came in the most unlikely circumstances. The adjoining stable at the Capannelle housed a lunatic racehorse called Prince Paddy. My dad says it was so mad that no-one dared go near it. The only way they could brush its coat with any degree of safety was with a long-handled broom. When the man who trained and looked after this crazy horse became ill with flu, no-one wanted to risk handling the beast in his absence.

That’s where my dad stepped in. He must have been mad too, because in addition to grooming Prince Paddy he decided to ride him at exercise. Young, fearless, and frustrated at the way things were turning out, he ended up begging to ride the one horse in the place that terrified everyone who came near it. People at the track feared the worst when he led the beast out of the stable and jumped onto its back. They all assumed it would be only a matter of time before my dad was sent crashing to the ground. Instead the pair hacked round together at a gentle pace as though they’d done it a thousand times before. It was the same when they teamed up again the next morning.

So that was how my dad started in racing. Eventually he partnered Prince Paddy every day, got his licence and rode the horse in his first race. To general amazement they won. My dad had experienced a very tough upbringing and believes the hunger and anger inside fired his ambition. By the time he reached twenty-one he had managed only five winners, three of them on Prince Paddy—yet within four years he was champion of Italy. Once he got there he was never going to throw it away. He was the best. No question.

Three of his brothers followed him into racing. Sergio became a very successful jockey too, with upwards of 1,500 winners and still rides a little bit while concentrating on his new career as a trainer. Sandro was also a jockey and is still involved as head lad to a trainer in Pisa. Pepe worked for years as a groundsman for the Italian Jockey Club. Salvatore was the outrageous one of the family. I don’t recall ever meeting him—which is a shame because everyone says he was a lovely bloke. He was strong as an ox but never really channelled his energy in the right direction. Instead he became an alcoholic and died in 1996 when he choked on his own vomit.

As a young jockey my dad was so disciplined that he was in bed at nine every evening, his jodhpurs laid out nearby without a single crease in them, ready for an early start in the morning. You could say he was single-minded to the point of obsession, and who could blame him. For years he’d been toiling away in filthy jobs for meagre reward, and unlike a lot of young jockeys with easy money in their pockets he wasn’t in a hurry to throw it all away.

It was the time of Molvedo, who followed in the hoofbeats of the mighty Ribot a few years earlier by winning Europe’s greatest race, the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe, for Italy. Initially Dad was second jockey to Ribot’s rider Enrico Camici. He learned much from Camici, but when he became champion he forged a strong alliance with the trainer Sergio Cumani in Milan—which, by then, was becoming the centre of Italian racing.

My parents married after a whirlwind romance that began when my father visited a travelling circus in Milan. His Saturday nights were spent with his friends either at the cinema or at the Circo Russo—which stretched to a pair of camels, a few monkeys, three or four lions and a resident clown. That evening he chose the circus, chiefly because it was next to the racecourse, and was immediately captivated by a gorgeous young girl in the ring with long black hair all the way down to her calves. She had a variety of roles that evening, including trapeze artist, contortionist, juggler and balancing athletically on the backs of two horses, one leg on each, with reins in her hands as they cantered side by side around the tight circus ring. She was also tied to a rotating wheel of fortune while some idiot wearing a headband threw knives at her!

Sitting in the front row, smartly turned out in a suit and tie, his brand new Vespa parked outside the big top, my dad couldn’t take his eyes off this girl. For him it was a case of love at first sight. My mother’s name is Iris Maria, but everyone calls her Mara. She was only sixteen that fateful night, like a rose about to bloom, and Dad made a point of meeting her afterwards. She had spent her entire life on the move with the rest of the family in the circus which originally came from Russia. They lived like a travelling band of gypsies. My dad pursued her relentlessly, swept her off her feet, and they were married a few short months later in 1963.

They were like two pigeons cooing at each other for sure. Theirs was a grand passion, but it was not an easy marriage because my mum had only known life on the road with the circus. She hardly ever attended school because she was always moving on to the next venue. As a result she can hardly read or write. We never did discover the identity of her father, but my grandmother Secondina, who never married, was one of two sisters who suffered terrible injuries to their legs when a caravan toppled over onto them when they were young children. Her sister was called Terzilla and their elder brother Primo. They all lived a nomadic life, earning peanuts and living in caravans as the circus rolled on from town to town each week.

My uncle Claudio was the resident clown. With a big belly and white tee-shirt he’s the spitting image of Onslow from the TV programme Keeping Up Appearances. Claudio was offered a house by his local council, but he was so used to life on the road that he turned it down to continue living in his own spartan caravan.

Once my parents married, my mother’s days as a trapeze artist were over. She was totally fearless then, but now she can’t bear to travel to England to see me because she’s frightened of driving through the Channel Tunnel and even more terrified of flying. It’s got to the stage where she won’t even go up an elevator in a department store. So I keep in touch by phone and try to visit her whenever I am in Italy.

My sister Alessandra (who we call Sandra) was born in 1965. I followed five years later. Dad wanted my name to be as similar as possible to his. At first he considered calling me Gianfranco too, but eventually decided that if I became a jockey then Gianfranco Dettori junior was too much of a mouthful. So Lanfranco it was, although everyone in England has been calling me Frankie for years. I’ve inherited my suppleness and athleticism from my mother—and, of course, the agility and balance to carry out my trademark flying dismount. From my dad came the drive and desire to make it to the top.

By the time I was born on 15 December 1970 my parents’ marriage was virtually over. I learned much later that at the time of my birth my father was away riding that winter in Australia and he was already involved with Christine, who eventually became my stepmother. They had met that August when he was riding in Deauville. From the start she shared his ambition and he must have known that his marriage to my mother was coming to an end even before I was born.

One of the problems was that my mother hated horseracing. To her it is a stupid pastime. She is a lovely person, beautiful, though completely down to earth, and having given up the nomad’s life she couldn’t settle to domesticity. She never really understood what drove my father—and later me—to devote our lives to making horses run as fast as they possibly can. He would come home full of himself explaining that he’d won the big race, and she’d reply ‘What race?’ In those days it was important for him to have someone who could share and enjoy his achievements and my mum couldn’t do that.

Nor did she appreciate the strict disciplines involving my father’s weight, so he could never be sure his supper would be on the table each evening at 6.30 after a long day’s work. My father was so single-minded in his pursuit of success that he became more and more well-known and eventually my mum was being left behind. She loved him for who he was, not for the fact that he was the most famous jockey in Italy. By becoming so successful he needed somebody to take him further, and perhaps my mum wasn’t educated enough to take the next step with him. She preferred to retain her simple lifestyle as a housewife and couldn’t cope with the fame that came with all his high-profile winners. I don’t blame her for that. It’s just the way she is.

The truth is that my parents probably married too early. They parted after six years and were quickly divorced. I don’t really remember them being together at all. After the split Sandra and I stayed with our mother in Milan. Dad lived no more than half a mile away with Christine but we didn’t see too much of him in the early days because he was so busy as a jockey. Then when I was five my parents had a summit meeting and decided that we should move in with him. It came down to economics. Mum felt he was much better placed to look after us and give us a decent start in life, but she made it clear she would always be there for us if we needed her.

The switch to living with my dad was tough for me, even tougher for my sister, and toughest of all for Christine. When you are so young you love your mother and it was only natural that we should hate the person who took her place. I wanted to hate Christine, and at first I did my best to make her life a misery. Looking back now I realise that I was totally unfair to her, yet I have to admit she brought me up brilliantly. I really respect what she did for me in the most trying circumstances.

I’m sure she made mistakes, too but it must be every woman’s nightmare to have to take over two unfriendly children who are not your own. Poor Christine must have been biting her lip every minute of the day. She was unbelievably strict, but I understand now that she was teaching us the right way even though we didn’t want to be told at that age—or in my case, at any age. It was: make your bed; clean your teeth; you must have a bath; get up when I tell you, blah, blah, blah. I might as well have been in the army. I had to be in bed early every night and my sister followed half an hour later. At least we had a break at the weekend when we went to stay with our mum. For me those were precious visits because I could sleep in until lunchtime if I wanted and could do pretty much what I liked. Then it would be back to reality with Christine on Sunday evening.

It was even more distressing for Sandra who had lived with mum until she was eleven. I’m sure the breakdown of our parents’ marriage affected her more than me. She didn’t take kindly to being told by Christine what to do every minute of the day. She tried to fight the system and became quite rebellious—but she was usually the loser and would end up in tears as we went to bed in the little cottage next to Dad’s house.

My mother eventually set up home with a cool guy called Salvatore. He was good looking, a bit of a hippy, and has always treated me like his own son. They are still together to this day. Mum doesn’t miss the glamour of life with my dad one bit. Far from it. She’s happily set in her ways, enjoys looking after Salvatore, and works as a cleaner for a wealthy family in Milan. She is a natural house woman, absolutely obsessed by dusting, cleaning, ironing and washing. In some ways she is a servant woman, born to be a slave to society because she is in her element doing these things. Every Monday she goes right round the house until everything is spotless. That makes her the happiest woman in the world.

Soon after I moved in with Dad and Christine, he took me off for a few riding lessons. It didn’t appeal to me one bit, partly perhaps because I was so small. Ponies held no interest for me. I was always waking up early in the mornings and often Dad would find me playing in the dining room when he came down. Soon he bought me jodhpurs, boots and a riding jacket. Then came the first time he took me with him in the morning to the stables of Sergio Cumani, the trainer who provided him with hundreds of winners during their rewarding association.

Once the racehorses had been exercised the lads would sometimes lift me onto the back of one that was tired and just walking round the yard while it cooled off. Being so light I’d cling to the mane while one of the lads held my leg just in case. Sergio would move among the horses after exercise, feeding them lots of sugar lumps. So this was my first experience of riding racehorses.

I also had an early insight into the demands on international jockeys. In addition to riding in Italy and sometimes France, Dad began to make frequent trips to England and occasionally Ireland. This followed the decision by Carlo d’Alessio, a Roman lawyer for whom he rode in Italy, to keep a select team of horses at Newmarket with Henry Cecil—who would become champion trainer countless times in the years ahead.

This development followed the appointment of Luca Cumani, Sergio’s son, as Cecil’s assistant. Years later Luca would play a pivotal role in my development as a jockey. Sergio trained for d’Alessio in Italy and had been in charge of the two-year-old colt Bolkonski when his first year’s campaign ended with an easy victory ridden by my dad in the Premio Tevere at Rome early in November 1974. That prompted d’Alessio to send the colt to Cecil. It proved to be an inspired decision even though Bolkonski was beaten on his debut in England in the Craven Stakes at Newmarket—often considered to be a trial for the 2,000 Guineas. Just over a fortnight later my dad rode him to victory at 33-1 in the Guineas, one of the five English Classics for three-year-olds that are the cornerstone of the racing calendar. Grundy, the horse he beat that day, went on to be one of the great horses of that decade.

My father’s first Classic success in England was overshadowed by an ugly dispute over pay between the stable lads and trainers, which overflowed into bitter confrontation at Newmarket on Guineas’ weekend. The night before the race some of the strikers stole a bulldozer, crashed it through a fence and damaged the track. On the day of the race striking lads formed a picket line while others joined forces at the start in an attempt to disrupt the Guineas. When the horses were almost all loaded in the stalls the strikers promptly sat down right across the course. A delay followed while police sought to restore order.

Eventually the runners formed a line just in front of the stalls and the starter let them go by waving a flag. My dad settled Bolkonski towards the rear of the pack before producing him with a timely run which gained the day by half a length over Grundy. Shortly after Bolkonski prevailed, Tom Dickie, the lad who’d looked after the horse from January until he joined the dispute, was carried shoulder high in front of the grandstand by his fellow strikers under heavy police escort.

Bolkonski extended his year of excellence by winning at Royal Ascot and Glorious Goodwood for my father, before an unexpected defeat at Ascot in September. By then the combination of Cecil, d’Alessio and Dettori were convinced that they had another potential champion on their hands in Wollow, who won all four of his races as a two-year-old.

Dad ended 1975 as the champion jockey of Italy once more with the added bonus of fourteen winners from forty-two rides in England. He briefly toyed with the idea of basing himself in England for a season, but it was a bit late in his career to be making significant changes and his commitments in Italy prevented the idea ever getting off the ground. He has always regretted that lost chance to ride full-time against the best jockeys in this country. That thinking influenced his choice of England as the starting point for my own career as a jockey ten years later.

The spring of 1976 saw Wollow continuing the good work by landing the 2,000 Guineas for the Italian connection for the second year running. There was then a brief hiccup on my dad’s first foray at Epsom Downs, the home of the English Derby. Hopes were high that Wollow could complete the Guineas-Derby double. He started a red-hot favourite at 11-10 but ran out of stamina in the final quarter mile and finished only fifth behind Lester Piggott on Empery. Dad gained a further Classic success on Pampapaul in the Irish 2,000 Guineas at the Curragh in May 1977, where he beat Lester on the future Derby winner The Minstrel by a short head.