first dettori, now russell.

​There is no getting away from it, with no amount of ‘no one man is bigger than the sport’ chanted against the tide of praise that can put the enormity of his decision to retire into any sort of context – flat racing, after one final season, is to lose its one and only superstar. The 2023 British flat season will be defined in racing history as the year of Frankie Dettori, and for that to be the case he will not even have to ride a classic winner or any of the major Group 1 races. Frankie Dettori is all set to leave the building. His shadow, though, will linger at all the racecourses he lit up throughout his stellar career.
Whether he is the greatest of the great flat jockeys is a matter of conjecture and personal choice. For many years I have dithered between Frankie being the best and Ryan Moore. In pure jockeyship skills there is not an atom between them, though if a gun were to be put to my head I would have to side with Moore as he is undoubtedly the more consistent of the two. Ryan Moore is bombproof, while Frankie can be rattled on occasions. Royal Ascot 2022 being a prime example.
In popularity amongst the public and, I would hazard a guess, his weighing room colleagues, Frankie wins hands down. The two are two sides of the same coin, one flamboyant and charismatic, the other dour and retrospective. Though, from what we are told, in private their roles as happy-go-lucky and straight-faced can be reversed. Ryan, it is said, has a great sense of humour. I wish he would go public with it, if only to confuse his interviewers. 
When submitting my thoughts to the B.H.A.’s whip steering group, I gave as evidence for my belief that ‘one hit and that’s it’ should be the way forward, the ride Frankie gave Enable when she out-battled Crystal Ocean in the King George & Queen Elisabeth at Ascot. As beautiful a ride as can be imagined, a prime example for all apprentices to try to emulate. One tap with the stick and then balanced harmony with his mount all the way to the finishing post.
There will never be another Frankie Dettori. We will only truly appreciate his contribution to the sport in 2024.

And now, more quietly than the extrovert Frankie, Davy Russell has hung up his saddle, winning on his final ride at Thurles, choosing a country course to announce his retirement, again in contrast to Frankie who intends to have his last British ride on Champions Day at Ascot in October 2023.
As with Frankie, Davy Russell lost none of his guile, skill or courage as he aged. At 43, at least to these tired eyes, he was as good in the saddle as he was twenty-years earlier in his career. In fact, given experience is never wasted on the older man, I suspect he may have been a better, more rounded jockey, as, perhaps, he was as a human being.
With Russell now gone from the Irish weighing room, the last of the brilliant cavaliers has ridden into history. Carberry, Walsh, Geraghty, Power, McCoy. The young lads following on have a gaping canvas to fill.
Russell’s greatest ride? Lord Windermere in the Cheltenham Gold Cup. The horse had no right to win jumping’s Blue Riband, yet somehow Russell conjured a stone of improvement in him, a horse that never before or after had the light of greatness upon him.
Finally, I will indulge myself with a poke at the trainer I hold in the highest of regards. Gordon Elliott recently claimed that Irish horses were better because their trainers did not ‘duck and dive’ like English trainers were in the habit of doing, with good horses, often from the same yard, taking each other on throughout the season. Paul Nicholl’s for one was not amused. Yet Gordon, with more than one Gold Cup horse in his stable, chooses not to send a horse over for the King George on Boxing Day. As it is with Willie Mullins, a man with twice the number of potential Gold Cup horses. And there is Paul Nicholl’s running all three of his potential Gold Cup horses.