After the famine, the feast! Racing’s most famous jockey and its most popular horse will soon be back in action.
There is a light at the end of the tunnel for everyone starved of action through the lockdown with news that Frankie Dettori is itching to return and is looking forward to getting back on wonder mare Enable, who is as good as ever.
We will not have long to wait for them either. Dettori is raring to go for the Guineas meeting, which will take place on the first weekend of next month provided racing is given the go ahead to resume on June 1.
And Enable could return at Royal Ascot, which is unmoved from its mid-June date, where the Prince Of Wales’s Stakes looks an obvious target.
The ten-time Group 1 winner could then bid to add to her tally in the Eclipse, King George and Yorkshire Oaks but her big target is returning to Longchamp in October in a bid to avenge last season’s Arc defeat by Waldgeist and became the first ever three-time winner of Europe’s most prestigious race.
“The main aim is trying to get her to the first Sunday in October in the best shape we can get her to try to do something that no horse has done in Arc history,” said Dettori, who has won 12 races on the amazing mare.
Enable is now six years old but Dettori said: “She looks magnificent. Sometimes you are afraid when a horse is getting older that they might lose the racing brain but she seems very alert and she struts around the place like she owns it. She’s very fresh and alert and that’s a good sign.”
The jockey is happy with his own form ahead of the return of racing and said: “There’s only so much you can do in the gym but I’ve been riding out. I’m very close to my top fitness. After a few days and after a few rides under my belt it will be business as usual.”
Looking ahead to the action-packed start planned for the resumption of racing, Dettori said: “It’s going to be fast and furious, exciting, very concentrated but if everything goes to plan at least we’ll be able to catch up and by the time we get to July/August. We’ll be right back to normal.”
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