Champion Frankie backs our Ascot

WORRIES about traffic gridlock aside, just about everyone you can think of will tell you York is on to a winner with Ascot coming to Knavesmire next year.

It is great for the punters, obviously. Great for the fashionistas. Great for those desperate to see some real Royal pomp in York instead of the occasional fleeting visit.

York's tourism industry can expect a real boom: every hotel and guest house within miles will be booked solid, and the city will enjoy unprecedented worldwide TV and newspaper coverage. Even York homeowners could cash in, if they are prepared to rent their homes out to Ascot punters for the week.

But what about the event itself? How will the week of York Ascot compare to its Royal rival down south - and will the newly-extended York track be up to the challenge of staging some of the world's most famous races?

Who better to ask than Frankie Dettori?

The 'cheeky chappie' of racing - how the lean, mean racing machine that is the new Frankie must hate that label now - has just become champion flat jockey for the third time. His triumph in ousting rival Kieren Fallon for the title ended a long, ten-year fallow period in which he spent almost as much time in the Question Of Sport studio as he did actually on the racetrack. But he's unquestionably been the flat jockey of the year - and he's also the man who famously made Ascot history by saddling seven winners in one day there back in 1996. Ascot is his 'lucky track'. So what does he think of Ascot coming to York?

Ah, well, if it had been left to him, he says, he'd have held the event at Newmarket. He lets that hang for a moment, tantalisingly.

"Because I live there!" he says, putting me out of my misery at last.

Actually, he adds, his words tumbling out at full gallop, York is a great course, and a worthy venue for the Royal event. "They say it is the Ascot of the North. Now you're actually going to have it next year."

The newly-crowned champion loves the York track - as he should, having ridden plenty of winners here, three of them in a single day last month as his race for the title with Fallon reached its final furlong.

"I have won most of the best races at York, and I really enjoy it," he says. "I enjoy the town, the crowd, the track - it's a wonderful track, with a great setting. It is one of the best tracks in the world, and you cannot fault it.

"Ascot has always been my lucky track - but York hasn't been too unlucky for me, either!"

One of the great benefits about switching Royal Ascot to a different track - even if only for a year, while the Berkshire course undergoes a £180 million redevelopment - is the element of uncertainty it introduces.

York may have been extended to form an Ascot-style oval, but it is still very much its own track. And since no one has raced the full oval yet, it will be pretty much an unknown.

Might that mean York Ascot throwing up a few surprises?

He pauses to consider that for a moment. "I will have to tell you that after the event," he says. "We're all a bit green on that."

One thing's for sure. The man the London Evening Standard once described as "the most recognised man on a horse since John Wayne" will be racing his socks off in York next June. The playboy jockey whose commitment to the daily grind of riding winners always used to be a bit suspect is a thing of the past. Frankie has rediscovered his hunger for winning and winning again.

Recapturing the championship after ten years felt good, he says. "It hasn't really sunk in yet. But I must say, it feels great. It's a slog, hard work and sweat, but it's a job well done and I've proved to myself that I can still do it."

What was it that helped him rediscover the grit needed to win and win again throughout the course of a full year? Might it have been the air crash that so nearly killed him four years ago? It might have been, he agrees. "It changed my life a bit."

His recent autobiography, written with Jonathan Powell, opens with a searingly honest account of that crash - of how he thought he was going to die as the little Piper Seneca aircraft in which he was a passenger plunged towards the ground near Newmarket: of how Ray Cochrane saved his life by dragging him from the wreckage of the plane; of how Ray was unable to save the pilot, Patrick Mackey.

In those moments when he thought he was going to die, Frankie's main feeling was one of disappointment at the waste of it all, and the fact that he would never again see his wife Catherine and son Leo.

When he realised he was going to live, a new feeling took over. "Because my life almost ended too soon, I decided there and then that I was going to make the most of it the second time around," he wrote.

If anything, however, that brush with death diluted his love of racing. It left him feeling there must be more to life than being a jockey - and his reluctance to fly to races made it hard to compete regularly, day in day out, at some of the smaller courses. It was eventually his wife Catherine who knocked some sense into him, he's on record as saying. She sat him down and told him "get your a*** in gear, go out there and start being a f****** jockey again".

So he did. The results have been obvious this season. And he plans to repeat his form next year. "I'm going to go all out," he vows.

Odds on his saddling another Magnificent Seven, anyone - this time at the Ascot of the North?

Frankie Dettori will be at Borders in Davygate, York at 5pm this afternoon to sign copies of his autobiography, Frankie.

"It is going to pay off in style"

CHAMPION jockey Frankie Dettori may have given York Ascot his vote of confidence. But how is the grand old racetrack going to cope with an influx of up to 60,000 punters a day - nearly doubling its normal gate?

Temporary boxes, a range of marquees and a special rails enclosure will all be used to boost the racetrack's capacity through the five-day feast of racing, says Royal Ascot's Nick Smith. That will still see it well short of the up to 80,000 who can flood into the grounds of Ascot on Ladies Day, however.

To help cope, a special event - licensed by Royal Ascot - is to be held in the City of London throughout the week of York Ascot, with the races being broadcast simultaneously.

It is a necessary measure - but one that will not detract from the event itself up here in York, Nick insists.

The York event will be an all-singing, all-dancing Ascot, complete with royal procession every day. "It is going to be a major part of the history of Ascot, of York and of racing," Nick says.

So how are the preparations going? The extension to the track to complete the oval was laid long ago, and is settling in well, Nick says. "The course are very happy with the way it was laid and has taken."

Arrangements for the temporary boxes and other structures are all "a long way down the line", and plans are in hand for a temporary helipad within easy reach of the course.

The major problem is going to be managing the traffic: but that is something Ascot organisers are prepared for. There won't be any miracle solutions in a city which is known for its traffic problems, he concedes. But Ascot organisers have been working closely with the city council on their plans to manage traffic. "And as long as people comply, it will be managed as best as possible," he says.

Given the smaller capacity of the York track, and the traffic problems in the city itself, have the Ascot organisers ever had any second thoughts about the event coming here? Would Newmarket, for example, have been a safer bet?

No second thoughts at all, Nick says. "York may have a small capacity, but it is still head and shoulders the best place we could have gone to."

Newmarket may have had the advantage in terms of on-course infrastructure, but there simply weren't the towns and villages around to support the sheer number of people that would need to stay for the five-day meet.

"People would have had to be staying a long way out."

So he is confident the decision to come to York is going to pay off?

"It is going to pay off in style."

Updated: 11:01 Wednesday, November 17, 2004