Читать книгу Frankie: The Autobiography of Frankie Dettori - Frankie Dettori - Страница 9

Our first stop in Newmarket was the house in the Bury Road which was to be my home for a few short, increasingly unhappy weeks. When we knocked on the front door at around four in the afternoon there was no reply. Since David was keen to take me to Luca Cumani’s yard, I left my big bag outside the back door, at his suggestion, convinced that I’d never see it again. At home in Milan I was used to kids trying to rob you as you walked along the street. Leaving all my precious possessions outside the house seemed to be asking for trouble.

Then we headed for the office at Luca’s yard nearby. He was not around, but his secretary took me to the bottom yard where I met his veteran head lad Arthur Taylor—who could speak some Italian because he fought there in the war as a sergeant in the Cavalry regiment and (I learned much later) had been involved in the battle for Montecassino at the same time as my grandfather Mario.

Arthur handed me a dandy brush and towel, led me to the fillies’ barn and put me to work. I was still wearing my suit, so I took off my jacket, hung it up, unbuttoned my shirt and started dressing the filly over as best I could. Half an hour later Luca appeared at the door of the box, said a brief buona sera!, told me to be in the yard by six the next morning, then went on his way round the yard at evening stables.

It had been a long day and I was already beginning to feel homesick as I was delivered back to my digs—and found to my surprise that my bag was still there. The whole family was there to meet me, including the father who was so massive he resembled the famous old wrestler ‘Big Daddy’. I was shown to my room upstairs under the corner of the roof next to the main road. In the weeks that followed it felt more like a prison than a refuge.

It was little bigger than a broom cupboard with just enough space for a small bed, a sink and a cupboard. Beside the basin was a jug of orange squash. I poured myself a glass, drank deeply then spat it out in disgust. I’d never encountered neat orange squash before and couldn’t imagine how anyone would want to drink it. In Italy I was used to fresh orange juice. It was one of many culture shocks I experienced in the next few days.

My first evening meal in England was another disaster. In an attempt to make me feel at home they laid on a plate of ravioli, but this was far from the delicious treat which I was used to enjoying back in Italy. This ravioli came instead from a Heinz tin! Everyone else tucked in but I thought it smelled awful—and when I tried a spoonful it was awful. The landlord was obviously irritated by my reaction so I struggled through a few more mouthfuls to keep the peace.

The family’s three children sitting round the table were a bit younger than me and we were also joined by several other lads who lived in the back of the house. Conversation was impossible because I didn’t speak any English. The only word I understood was Swinburn. Apparently my new landlord was a fanatical fan of trainer Michael Stoute who employed Walter Swinburn as his stable jockey. Aware that I was working for Luca Cumani he banged on endlessly about Stoute, Swinburn and Shergar, but most of it went straight over my head. I was utterly miserable as I trooped upstairs to bed.

Riding out with the Cumani team the next morning made me feel a little better, though I was overwhelmed by the size of the place and the sheer number of horses we could see on Newmarket heath. After the delights of Milan and Pisa, Newmarket truly did seem like the headquarters of racing, with almost sixty trainers squeezed into the town. Luca trained a string of just over one hundred horses that season, a total that would almost double in the years ahead. Half of them were in the main yard beside the house, with the rest in the bottom yard which was where I started. I’d never been involved with such a huge racing set-up before, and it was quickly made clear to me that the guv’nor, as everyone called him, expected things to be done properly. All the lads seemed in awe of him as he moved around the yard like a Roman emperor.

At lunchtime that first day I used some of the cash my dad had given me to buy a bicycle for £80. That evening I rode it proudly to work, but as the week went on I felt more and more isolated. At fourteen I was several years younger than any of the other lads and nobody much seemed to want to talk to me—except a nice old boy called George Dunwoody who’d trained and ridden horses in Northern Ireland for many years. More recently he’d looked after a Classic horse—the previous year’s St Leger winner Commanche Run.

In a way we were the ‘odd couple’ thrown together by fate, the young Italian nuisance at the start of his career and the veteran stableman who was helping out around the yard at the other end of the rainbow. George always had time for me and tried to explain things as best he could. Later, as my English improved, he told me that his son Richard was making his name as a jockey over fences. George rather took me under his wing and we would sit outside on a couple of bales of straw most mornings that summer, eating breakfast together.

Others weren’t too friendly at first. Some picked on me, mimicking my voice, generally giving me a tough time and giving me a clip around the ear whenever they felt I deserved it. No wonder I was homesick! If there were dirty jobs to be done you can be sure that L. Dettori was the one told to do them. That’s the way it has always been in racing: the youngest and weakest learn the hard way. It’s the law of the jungle. As they grow stronger they in turn make life difficult for the latest newcomers.

Luca is on record as saying I was pretty wild when I arrived from Italy, badly in need of a firm hand to straighten me out, but that isn’t how I remember it. Far from it. It might have been the case four years later, but until I found my feet I was naive and so quiet you wouldn’t believe it. For the first six months I was probably the best apprentice in the yard, keen as mustard. I was up so early I arrived at the yard before the head lad so I was usually the one who opened up the tack room. Realising that I was a slow worker, I wanted to make sure my horses looked immaculate.

I was also incredibly lonely in those early days and often used to cry myself to sleep. At the beginning it was almost a game with Luca Cumani. I had agreed to go to him without supposing for a minute that I’d stay very long. I felt I only ended up in England because football dominates every other sport in Italy.

For the first six months it was work, to bed, work, to bed again…nothing else. The worst nights were Mondays. Then my dad would ring from Italy on the dot of seven, ask how I was getting on, and encourage me as best he could by saying that, if I stayed at Luca’s, I too could one day have a big car and fly in private planes like famous jockeys such as Lester Piggott and Pat Eddery. It was his way of brainwashing me. He also made it clear that it was a hard and tiring job, and at times a thankless one. I would need to make enormous sacrifices if I wanted to be a jockey.

When I was talking to him I usually managed to hold back the tears, but when I put the phone down I was utterly miserable. It was all part of growing up but I’ve no doubt that my dad was far tougher than me. He had such a hard upbringing and didn’t hesitate to send me away to another country to further my future. I question him about it all the time. How would he have felt if I’d failed? He says he can’t answer that one because I became so successful. I know I am a thousand times weaker than him because I couldn’t do the same to my own son Leo. I am as soft as butter with my own children and could never send them away like that.

I soldiered on as best I could, concentrating on my work, carefully looking after my three horses, and riding out every morning. Initially my social life was non-existent. I was quiet, withdrawn even, but as I began to find my feet I started to come out of my shell and be my more natural cheeky self. Initially I owed much to the friendship of Valfredo Valiani, another Italian apprentice with Luca. He was my saviour. Years later he returned to England in triumph as a trainer, winning the valuable 2001 Yorkshire Oaks with the filly Super Tassa.

Things picked up further when I joined forces with two apprentices, both five years older than me, who also worked in the bottom yard. Initially I fought with Colin Rate and Andy Keates. It was madness to argue with them really because the age gap between us should have made me more cautious. To me they were the hierachy. They forced me to do all their chores, but after a few light-hearted skirmishes we teamed up against the rest of the lads.

Colin had come late to racing at seventeen after training as a carpenter. He rode three winners for Newmarket trainer Ben Hanbury and would go on to achieve a fair bit of success for Luca Cumani. As he is from Sunderland, the biggest hurdle to our friendship in the early days was that we couldn’t understand a single word we said to each other. Colin quickly became my best friend. There is not a day when we do not speak and he always tells me exactly what he thinks.

Colin’s mate Andy had more of a racing background. One of his uncles, Joe Mercer, had been champion jockey in 1979 towards the end of a great career, and another uncle, Manny Mercer, was killed tragically young in a fall at Ascot. Andy had a few race rides once he joined Luca shortly before me in 1985, but he was never going to make a jockey. For the past fourteen years he has worked for me as my driver and Man Friday.

This duo were soon leading me astray, though I didn’t need much encouragement. We shared a genuine love of horses, a well-developed sense of the ridiculous, and a hunger for adventure that frequently left us broke. Part of our daily ritual was a 20p each-way accumulator on the afternoon’s racing because that was all we could afford. I’d been a mad keen punter in Italy on my visits to the races. Now Colin and Andy introduced me to the habit of spending the afternoon in a betting shop—and when we had collected the place money on our first accumulator I was hooked.

When you are that young you cannot go to pubs or drinking clubs so I ended up as a typical betting shop punter, ‘doing my brains’ every week. Colin and Andy were just as bad. We were all addicted to betting. We’d take lunch together in the New Astley Club, a base for so many stable lads, play snooker and pool, then rush across the road to place bets and listen to the commentaries in a betting shop owned by a character called Cuthie Suttle.

Cuthie soon became a useful source of funds when I was hard up. Sometimes he’d lend me the price of a haircut in the barber’s shop nearby when I needed one, or maybe £5 to keep me afloat at the weekend. When I backed a winner—which was not very often—I repaid his kindness by sharing bags of fruit and sweets with his customers.

However, my new friends couldn’t save me from the ritual embarrassment of having my private parts greased, the fate of all newcomers to racing. It happened without warning at the end of work one morning. A gang of them held me down near the dung heap, removed my jodhpurs and pants, then encouraged one of the girls to cover my pride and joy with hoof oil. They finished off their handiwork by stuffing a carrot up my backside to loud applause, before leaving me writhing with embarrassment on the dung heap. Removing the carrot took only a moment but cleaning up all the grease and oil from my skin took several days of energetic scrubbing.

Around the same time, I finally had the sense to change my lodgings which had become more and more like Fawlty Towers. The children there were driving me mad, my room upstairs was like a cell, and it was too expensive, even though I had to take my washing down to the launderette every Sunday. I also had to feed myself on Sundays and ended up having a large Wimpy while my clothes were drying. The parents of one of our stable lads, David Sykes, had a spare room at their council house five minutes from the yard. He took me to meet them and I moved in on the spot. It was one of the best decisions I’ve ever made.

Although Val and Dennis Sykes struggled to make ends meet they treated me like their own son from day one. For all of my two years with them I ate like a pig—which was probably not the most sensible habit for someone who wanted to become a jockey. Every evening, when I returned from work, a roast meal complete with Yorkshire pudding and all the trimmings would be waiting for me on the table. Val was superb at cooking cream cakes and egg custards, which I couldn’t resist the moment they came out of the oven. She and Dennis spoiled me too much and let me do what I wanted in the evenings.

Twice in the early days Val even took me to her weekly bingo sessions in the town with her mother. This didn’t appeal to me so I invented an excuse when they invited me again. Val and Dennis were generous to a fault and made me feel great, though Val had her moments when I came back from work and deposited straw and mud on the stairs on my way up. She dug out the vacuum cleaner and stood over me as I cleared up the mess. I used to call Val ‘mum’ and she called me Pinocchio! She and Dennis had a smashing black labrador called Jamie which I often rode like a horse on the carpet in the evenings. When I heard a few years later that he’d died I took them an instant replacement in the shape a boisterous yellow labrador—which they immediately christened Frankie.

After the tight discipline of home it was a relief that Val didn’t mind when I stayed out late with Colin and Andy as we trawled the pubs on Friday, Saturday and occasionally Sunday nights, if our funds lasted that long. We had the time of our lives, a right laugh. The boys were into drinking pints of vodka but I restricted myself to grapefruit juice. As I was only fourteen the hardest part was smuggling myself into a pub. Sometimes I borrowed a leather jacket with padded shoulders, and then I hit on the idea of smearing print from newspapers on my face to make myself look a bit older. It usually worked, too, though I was turned away once or twice until people got to know me.

Luca Cumani treated me like the little kid I was in those early days. Most of the time he spoke to me in English, but when he was angry with me—which was frequently!—he tended to shout in Italian. It was not that he didn’t care, more that he had bigger fish to fry. At times he could be just like a dictator, very cold and professional. At evening stables he would run his finger along the top of my horse’s back, showing up the dirt on its coat I hadn’t touched, and then give me a bollocking. When I protested that I was too small to reach its back he told me to stand on a bucket. Then he’d come round the next night to check I’d done what he said. I used to call him all sorts of names out of his hearing, but he was a master of his trade and I wasn’t living up to his standards.

One of my early jobs was to groom any horse turned out in the paddock in a metal pen, but as usual I couldn’t reach their backs to brush them. I got round this by using an upturned water bucket to climb on to the horse’s back. Sometimes, just for fun, I’d perch back to front facing its tail. That way I could brush its quarters properly while the horse grazed peacefully under me. I was really pleased with myself at this piece of enterprise—until Luca caught me one day and called me every name under the sun for taking unnecessary risks.

My initial enthusiasm for looking after my horses properly began to wane as Christmas drew near. Instead I developed into a Jack the Lad, a right little rascal. I’d got wise to the way things were done and started to cut corners by ducking out of as much work as possible. I did all the things that apprentices were not allowed to do. Single-handedly I changed the system. Luca would get to hear about it and encourage his senior lads to control me. I was a rebel then and used to upset everbody in the yard. No wonder they picked on me and gave me plenty of whacks, but I still got away with murder.

The job I hated most was having to spend hours on the chaff machine, a huge contraption used for chopping up hay into small bits for the horses. I cut chaff for five years, from fourteen to eighteen, and loathed absolutely every minute of it. When you are small and have already done a day’s work you are usually too knackered to force the handle round, so it used to take me half an hour to fill one bucket full of chaff. And if you loaded the hay too thickly into the machine you couldn’t move the handle.

Eventually I hit on a brilliant plan which saved me hours of toil. I’d climb onto the handle, then jump up and down until it snapped. Each time it broke the kids in the main yard had to cut the chaff for us, too, on their machine. Unfortunately Luca’s handyman usually repaired the damage within a few days. Then it was back to the grindstone for me until I damaged it once more.

If one of the bigger lads picked on me I used to get my own back when he wasn’t looking by flooding one of the boxes he was working in. Two barrels of water in a box of straw or paper takes a lot of clearing up. Flooding boxes was one of my specialities, but because no-one else was daft enough to do something like that, they always identified the culprit and then I’d get another whacking.

Colin and I were lighter than the other apprentices, so we had the task of riding away the youngsters bought by Luca and his owners at the yearling sales late that year, as part of the process of breaking them in and getting them used to a saddle on their back. It was an amusing sideline which almost led to my being placed on the transfer list. It happened when we were caught racing Luca’s yearlings round the paddock at breakneck speed like jockeys in a head to head finish. That was the year that Steve Cauthen and Pat Eddery dominated the jockeys’ championship, so as we rode away the yearlings I played the role of Steve while Colin fancied himself as Pat. First we’d have a trotting race, then another one going a fair bit faster. Of course one thing led to another because our rivalry was so intense. We snatched two branches from the hedge and used them as whips as we tried to imitate our heroes by driving the yearlings ever faster in an imaginary finish.

This carried on for day after day. Sometimes we’d have seven races round the paddock on the same pair, even though we knew that forcing unfurnished youngsters to run faster than was good for them was madness. These were expensive young babies with a big future, and we were treating them as recklessly as dodgem cars at the fairground. By the time we finished they were often covered in sweat with their eyes popping and their flanks heaving. We were asking for trouble and it was only a matter of time before we were spotted by the stud’s head lad. He immediately reported us to Luca—though luckily he didn’t realise that we had been up to the same tricks for days on end.

Luca went ballistic. He was incandescent with rage as he read the riot act to us in his office. I thought he was going to sack us both on the spot, and if he had known the full story he probably would have sent us packing. Instead he threatened me with all sorts of dire punishment if we ever did it again—including a move to the Midlands trainer Reg Hollinshead, who had a reputation for being an even sterner disciplinarian.

After six months at Newmarket, I headed home to Italy for a Christmas break just after my fifteenth birthday. I wasn’t sure I wanted to go. By then my English was picking up quite well, I’d found a family who treated me as one of their own, I had a few pals, and I was starting to have a bit of a life in Newmarket. We’d play snooker in the New Astley Club for pennies, eat a few pancakes and share our accumulators. There was always plenty of laughter—particularly on Saturday nights when we’d all go to the disco, where the rest of the lads would get legless while I stayed on soft drinks, so I often ended up looking after the worst cases. I loved all this nonsense. Life was definitely looking up now that I was coming out of my shell.

Scratching together the air fare to Milan was a bit of a struggle, but Cuthie Suttle came to my aid with a loan of £20—which I repaid by post since I was half expecting to be sent to work for the trainer Patrick Biancone in France in the New Year as the next stage of my dad’s Grand Plan for Lanfranco. But Luca must have seen enough to want to keep me, so soon I was on my way back in January to the coldest winter I have ever endured. It was so bleak, particularly in February, that Newmarket felt like Siberia. Jump racing came to a halt for a month because of the state of the tracks, and most of the time we were restricted to trotting endlessly round Luca’s indoor riding school.

Working in those conditions was horrible. However many layers of clothes we wore we were still frozen to the bone as soon as we stepped outside. Because every penny counted for Val at my digs, she frequently complained about the cost of electricity in her house. Maybe she didn’t realise that I had an electric blanket and a heater going full blast in my room all the time. Ever since then I’ve managed to slip away to the sunshine for part of the winter at least. It’s the only way I can stay sane.

To help keep warm in the sub-zero temperatures, my mates and I used to spend all afternoon in the betting shop. Horses, greyhounds, boxing and soccer—I gambled on them all. The horseracing was cancelled in February and early March, so then I became quite an expert on the dogs. I always went for trap 1 or trap 6 and—against all the rules—I tried to delay handing over my betting slip until I’d seen if my selection had jumped well out of the traps. If it missed the break I walked away without having a bet.

The weather improved enough for horseracing to restart later in March, and I’ll never forget the day I backed the great mare Dawn Run to win jump racing’s top chase, the Cheltenham Gold Cup. Small patches of snow still lay infield and the grass at Cheltenham was scorched brown by the frost. The odds about Dawn Run were just under 2-1 and I had £50 on her nose—which was a decent bet for me. We all watched the race on a big screen at the New Astley Club near the betting shop, and the style of her victory moved me in a way that no other jumping race has ever done. She just refused to give in when all hope seemed gone and fought back like a tigress on the final testing hill to take the prize. It was beautiful to watch.

That was the first time I cried over a horse race and I haven’t seen one like it since. I rushed out of the club into the cold outside with tears pouring down my face, jumped on my bike to return to work, and was still crying when I got there five minutes later.

Some time before Christmas, George Dunwoody confided during one of our many chats that his son Richard was convinced he would win the Grand National the following spring on West Tip. The horse had been tanking along disputing the lead when falling at Becher’s Brook on the second circuit in the race the previous April. You could hardly ask for better inside information, so at lunchtime I rushed down to Cuthie Suttle’s shop and invested my last £5 at the time on West Tip at 33-1, and topped it up a week or two later with another £5 at 28-1. All winter the messages from Richard, via his father, were upbeat. The horse was well and, barring accidents, would definitely gain compensation for his previous bad luck at Aintree.

So every week that winter I would put on another £5 or £10 at the best price I could negotiate with Cuthie, and by the time the great day arrived I worked out that I stood to win almost £2,000. By then West Tip was favourite at 15-2. Watching spellbound from the arm of the sofa with Val and Dennis, a cup of tea in my hand, I never had an anxious moment. The horse jumped those mighty fences to the manner born, and Richard Dunwoody—who was barely out of his teens—showed incredible coolness by waiting until well after the last fence before allowing him to stride clear.

I shouted West Tip home every step of the way. When he landed safely over the final fence I threw everything up in the air and rushed out of the house to collect my winnings. I felt like a millionaire! Normally I was left with less than £20 a week in my pocket after various deductions from my paltry wages, and suddenly I had upwards of £1900 burning a hole in my wallet. The first thing I did with the money was to buy a new washing machine for Val who’d been struggling with a worn-out model for years. It was the least I could do for someone who would share her last penny with me. I also bought her a new iron. Then, on the Monday, I splashed out on a decent Vespa scooter for myself.

Over the next few weeks I blew a lot of the money away, but this time I still had something to show for it, and I even managed to save a little bit in the metal box I used as a secret safe hidden away in the chimney of my bedroom. I don’t think I am talking through my pocket when I say that West Tip is the one horse I would love to have ridden in the National. You could jump a house on him with your eyes shut. He was the living best at Aintree and I was in ecstasy for six months at the memory of his performance.

I was soon in trouble with the law for riding my new scooter illegally on pavements. Once again Val came to my rescue when two burly policemen turned up on the door intent on booking me. By the time I appeared timidly from my room she had convinced them that the reason for my error was that I couldn’t speak or read a word of English.

Cuthie Suttle’s betting shop had become my second home by then. I was punting just about every day. If necessary I’d gamble on two flies crawling up a wall. When things got really bad, and I did all my cash—which was most of the time—I helped out as the chalk boy. Cuthie paid me £5 for an afternoon’s shift, scribbling down the latest prices on the wall in the last minutes of trading, then filling in the results. There were two problems with this arrangement. First of all I couldn’t reach the top of the board to complete the early results. Secondly my spelling was hopeless. No-one seemed to mind, though I sometimes had to skip the last race or two to rush back to work at evening stables.

Val, bless her, became so concerned at the amount of money I was gambling away that she marched down for a confrontation with Cuthie, demanding that he stop taking my bets. Cuthie tried to explain that if he barred me from his betting office I’d merely move to another one in the town where I’d probably fare even worse. Once I was in the habit of losing every week I started to work for other lads in the yard on my weekends off to get the money back. I’d also borrow £5 here, or £2 there. When I look back now I was silly. Legally I was too young to bet, but punting is a way of life for most stable lads and I was no exception.

It was a costly habit which left Luca Cumani close to throttling me on one memorable occasion in May 1986. It happened after just about everyone in the yard had done their brains on a horse called Saker at the York races. Saker was what we call a morning glory. At home he always worked like a serious horse and had shown great promise when he finished an eye-catching sixth on his debut a fortnight earlier in a decent maiden race won by another of our horses.

Saker started joint favourite at York but ran like an old man in tight boots as he trailed in a distant fourth. That evening at work I told anyone who’d listen—including the second head lad Stuart Jackson—that Luca couldn’t train a bicycle, let alone a racehorse. When Luca was looking round a little later you can imagine my feelings as Stuart Jackson asked him the Italian word for bicycle.

‘Why do you want to know?’ asked the trainer. Stuart then dropped me right in the cart by repeating my view that he couldn’t train a bicycle. The look on Luca’s face told me I was in serious trouble. There were no preliminaries for what followed. He asked Stuart to take over the horse I was holding, seized me forcibly by my collar with both hands, lifted all five stone of me into the air and rammed me against the wall a foot off the ground. I’ll never forget the words that followed. As usual when he was angry with me, they were delivered in Italian.

‘Maybe I can’t train a bicycle Frankie, but while you work for me I will always be the greatest trainer in the world. Do you understand?’ he roared, shaking me like a dog. By the time he dropped me onto the floor of the box I was in no condition to speak, let alone answer back, but obviously I didn’t learn my lesson because I was back at Cuthie’s betting shop the next day trying to recoup my losses.

An interesting bunch used to meet there most afternoons. Some days the place seemed more like a private members’ club. One of the regulars, Shippy Ellis, is now agent for several jockeys, including George Duffield and Philip Robinson. I also met Peter Burrell there. He was always looking for new challenges and was helping Julie Cecil run a few syndicates at the time. Within days of meeting me, Pete offered to look after my business affairs even before I’d had a ride in public. I was flattered that he had such faith in me.

Another member of our circle was Mattie Cowing, a smashing guy who was a walking form book. He was just like Frank in Eastenders (played by the comedian Mike Reid), with a deep voice and a great sense of humour. Mattie used to be employed full-time in a factory making boxes until a stroke prevented him working and allowed him to indulge his passion for racing. He seemed to live in the betting shop and was a mine of information.

We hit if off from the start, but he clearly thought I was a rascal, an Italian idiot who gambled away everything and was going nowhere. A year later he turned me down when I first asked him to book my rides. Luckily I persisted and he eventually became the most loyal of allies as my agent. A few years later one of the biggest punters of modern times, Barney Curley, joined the group gathered round the screen—but by then I was no longer a member of the club because I was pretty much riding full-time.