Frankie Dettori: 'I feel like Lance Armstrong'

16 May 2013

In his first TV interview since his six-month ban from racing, Frankie Dettori tells Channel 4 News he feels like Lance Armstrong having been drug tested 15 times in the last two months. He says: “I've been - don't laugh - tested 15 times in two months.  It’s part of the protocol you have to go through so many tests, I've never had a problem with that. It's amazing, I feel like Lance Armstrong. They come and knock on my door any time of the day.”

During the wide-ranging interview to be broadcast at 7pm tonight, Dettori also reveals his professional woes were a key factor in his moment of weakness claiming he was "depressed" as his relationship with Godolphin unravelled, and blames the collapse of the relationship for his state of mind when he took cocaine.

“Up till about two years ago I was having the best time of my life. I had the best job in the world, the best relationship with Sheikh Mohammed, with all the Godolphin stuff in the world. I was loving it.

“And then for some reason things have changed. We had a new trainer, new way of doing things and I didn’t know whether I was in and out. Sometimes I was riding them, sometimes I wasn’t and things got worse and worse,” he says.

"My first seventeen years of my riding career [at] Godolphin, I was always the number one pick.  All of a sudden I saw myself being the fourth in the biggest race in the world, and it started from there and it was never an explanation why and what, you know. I had to accept it for unknown reasons.”

Dettori tells Clare Balding the first “stumbling hurdle" was when he was refused a horse for the Derby trial.  Then, at the Ladbrokes St Leger, he was beaten into third place by one of his rival Godolphin jockeys, Mickael Barzalona, riding Encke.

"You start getting depressed. I wasn't sleeping at night. I was arguing with my wife. My head was wrecked, absolutely wrecked. I couldn't take it anymore," he says.

He chose to ride for rival stables, Ireland's Coolmore Stud, in the Prix De L'Arc De Triomphe. He rode the Aidan O'Brien-trained Camelot in the race, and split with Godolphin soon after.

“In hindsight I should have perhaps confronted Godolphin and asked them the reasons.  Or perhaps do things different ways.  But things just spiral out of control.  It's amazing when you analyse everything back - it just all happens and you get yourself in a rut.  Like I said, perhaps I did things the wrong way. It was a cry for help,” he says.

In tonight’s Channel 4 News interview, Dettori also talks to Clare Balding about:

•          The breakdown of relationship with trainer Mohmood Al Zarooni and the Godolphin steroid scandal

•          His drug use being a one-off

•          Being nervous about how public will perceive him on his return to racing

•          His father urged him to go to the Priory

 

ENDS

MUST USE: Clare Balding talks exclusively to Frankie Dettori on Channel 4 News

MORE of the interview with Dettori available on Channel 4 News online from 7pm today and from Friday 17 May on Channel 4 Racing.