I can trace all our problems back to Frankie Dettori

‘If you think about it, Frankie Dettori is to blame,’ said the builder boyfriend, because when things are really bad he deploys satire.

One thing leads to another with horses, the joke goes, so we may as well trace our problems back as follows.

If Dettori had not ridden a horse called Marienbard to victory in the 2002 Prix de L’Arc de Triomphe by bringing something magical out of a horse as slow as an elephant so that the Godolphin bay suddenly, like something out of a movie, exploded from the absolute back of the field to come from nowhere, overtaking horse after horse after horse in the final seconds of the race, flying over the finishing line so improbably that even the commentators were caught off guard and the first time they mentioned the horse as a contender was when they were announcing he had won… if Dettori had not managed to do that then Marienbard would not have been standing at stud.