Frankie Dettori: My shameful life of drugs and vice girls

EXCLUSIVE: Riding for a fall..

YOUNG Frankie Dettori was sweating nervously as he prepared for the scariest ride of his life.

As usual he was surrounded by other jockeys. But this was no racecourse. For frightened Frankie, aged 16, was in the back of a car and about to lose his virginity...to a busty Italian hooker.

And the cheering riders around him were rocking his motor back and forth as he hung on like grim death while they urged him towards the winning post.

"It wasn't my greatest fantasy night and it put me off sex for a while," says Frankie.

"But I went on to live like a playboy. If I'd wanted I could have had more girls than a porn star. I was like a runaway train heading downhill, out of control."

Frankie reveals all about his vice-girl shame in his sensational warts-and-all life story. But although he grins at that memory there are darker ones that make him hang his head in shame.

For today he confesses for the first time how he took drugs as he searched for new thrills in his high-octane lifestyle as Britain's top flat-racing jockey.

In April 1993 Frankie was arrested for possession of cocaine. He got away with a caution and has never confessed to taking it—until now.

"I'm not proud to admit it—but yes, I did take cocaine. I took it because it gave me a high. But it was the most shameful day of my life," he says.

"A day before my arrest I'd ridden a winner for the Queen. Then I feared I was about to become a guest at one of her prisons.

"Luckily I had good people around me—because if I hadn't changed my ways I probably would have ended up in jail." Life has been good to lucky Milan-born Frankie. Within ten years of being given a palomino pony at the age of eight by his champion jockey father, he was heading for racing stardom. He had looks, charm and money.

But he was about to discover the seedier side of life. It happened when he was an apprentice jockey in Naples.

Virgin

"After racing on Sunday a gang of us would go watching blue movies in a back-street cinema," says Frankie, now 34. "I could hardly see over the counter to pay the fee! Afterwards some would then set off for a liaison with the local ladies.

"I'd had a few girlfriends but was still pretty innocent. One night my pals all decided it was time for my sexual initiation.

"They took me to their favourite prostitute, who plied her trade in a big car at the top of a hill. They decided I should be first then bundled me into the back with the girl. I was a 16-year-old virgin. She was a busty brunette in her 30s. She removed her skirt and skilfully helped me wriggle out of my trousers, before producing a giant pink condom. Then she asked me if I was ready. As if I would have known!

"She was aware that it was my first time and she tried to help me as best she could but for me the earth didn't move—though the car did!

"The boys were peering through the back window, cheering me on, and when they saw me moving they immediately began rocking the car violently up and down. When it was over I grabbed my trousers, ready to escape. I was seized by several pairs of arms and propelled into the road as my pals fought to be next."

It was a grubby introduction to sex —but Frankie was hot for the girls.

In New York for a race against Lester Piggott in the Breeders' Cup meeting at Belmont Park, wild Frankie wrecked his hotel suite during a booze and sex romp with pals.

"We were way over the top and trashed the place. When I woke up next morning I had a massive love bite on my neck so I wore my collar up to hide it while I rode out," he says. But he was found out when the owner of the horse he was to ride used his suite to get changed for the race—before it had been cleaned.

"I lost the race and my trainer Luca Cumani gave me a sharp lecture—always clean up after your parties," says Frankie.

But he didn't learn his lesson. In the winter of 1992 he was riding in Hong Kong when a bout of horse sickness put him at a loose end.

"I lived like a playboy in Hong Kong where jockeys are treated like film stars and they laid on high-class ladies for me," says Frankie. "I was well and truly seduced by the night life. Talk about sowing wild oats!"

But on his return to London, he was heading for a fall.

In April 1993, after Arsenal won the Coca Cola Cup, jubilant Gunners fan Frankie partied in the city with some pals from Newmarket. He later staggered into a disco with two of his friends. He says: "I was in the mood for anything. So when someone came along selling cocaine I was persuaded to buy a tiny amount.

"Drugs have never been my scene and never will be—but I experimented without thinking of the consequences.

"I put the rest of the stuff in my pocket and forgot about it. We were fooling around in an alleyway outside the club when a torch was flashed in my face and I found myself looking up at two policemen. They asked us to turn out our pockets. My two pals were clean but I wasn't so lucky.

"The moment the search unearthed the wrap of cocaine in my pocket, I sobered up pronto. I was arrested, loaded into a van and taken to the nearest police station.

"Already I could see my world crumbling. If news of my arrest became public I could be finished."

Frankie begged to be let off but was left to stew in an interview room.

Later, he was bailed and got away with a caution—but the story broke and the Hong Kong Jockey Club banned him for that season.

Crazy

It was his lowest ebb. "All I'd thought about was partying and chasing girls. The last thing on my mind had been racing. I must have been crazy to let myself slip so far."

Frankie pulled his life together. He went on to become champion jockey in 1994 with 233 winners, retained his title the following year and then, in 1996, made history by riding seven winners from seven rides at Ascot.

In 1997 the millionaire married his adoring fiancée Catherine. At the reception, Rolling Stones guitarist Ronnie Wood had everyone in tears with a rendition of Amazing Grace.

Catherine is expecting their fifth child in five years. "I still can't believe my good fortune," says Frankie, who was awarded the MBE in 2001.

But that good fortune was not always in his own hands—as he was to discover one day in an aeroplane over Newmarket.

Adapted from Frankie: The Autobiography of Frankie Dettori by Frankie Dettori with Jonathan Powell to be published by CollinsWillow on September 23, price £18.99. Text © Frankie Dettori 2004