Horse Racing: Barry Glendenning on Frankie Dettori's Chances on Authorized

Although certain quarters of the racing press would have you believe otherwise, the world will not stop turning if Frankie Dettori does not ride the winner of this year's Derby. The popular Italian has famously failed to do so on 14 previous occasions and there is a very good chance he will famously fail to do so again on Saturday afternoon. Although his mount Authorized is odds-on favorite, that is far from a guarantee of success. History tells us that similarly fancied hotpots have a fairly dismal record over the undulating topography of the Epsom Downs.

Before it emerged this morning that he was struggling to be fit for the ride on Authorized, the portents for Dettori were already bad. The withdrawal of Teofilo ensured that this year's Derby was always going to turn into the Frankie Show and the extrovert jockey has done little to prevent the countdown to the race from turning into a circus featuring him as the star turn. All week he's been staging press conferences, granting interviews and fielding phone calls, telling anyone who'll listen how happy is to have the ride on the favorite, how nervous he is about the big race, how relieved he'll be if he wins and how acrobatic his flying dismount will be when he's led in.

Fate hasn't been tempted this much since Milan began their post-match celebrations at half-time in Istanbul. So why risk it? "Like no other jockey, he understands that he has a role to play for racing, and although he may be climbing the walls mentally as the Derby looms, he knows he has to ride the media merry-go-round," writes Alastair Down in today's Racing Post, in an attempt to justify his particular interruption to the jockey's preparations. Like every other racing journalist in the build-up to a Classic, Down has a job to do, but he couldn't be more wrong. Never mind media merry-go-rounds, the only ride that matters for Dettori this week is the one aboard Authorized, and just for once the notoriously garrulous jockey should keep his head down and his mouth shut until his work in the saddle is done.

Frankie Dettori fits many descriptions: the jockey who rode the Magnificent Seven, the jockey who threw away the Breeders' Cup Classic on Swain, the jockey who was less funny than Ally McCoist on A Question of Sport, and the jockey who miraculously escaped from a plane crash with his life. Should the unthinkable happen and Frankie Dettori end his career without filling in the one conspicuous blank on his CV, he'll have enough epithets attached to his name to render that of being the best jockey never to have won the Derby fairly inconsequential.

Lots of jockeys haven't won the Derby, so if you're destined to be one of them you might as well be the best. Should the favorite get turned over on Saturday, it's the horse we should feel sorry for. Frankie Dettori will have plenty more chances to win the Derby, but Authorized only gets one.