Three personalities dominated the Flat season: Gosden, Dettori and Golden Horn. Victories for the trio in the Derby, the Irish Champion Stakes and the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe ensured that John Gosden, a true ambassador for the sport, once again won the trainers’ championship, a title determined by the value of victories won. Frankie Dettori was not champion jockey and never again will be: that title (who needs logic in racing?) is determined by the number of winners ridden and deservedly went to the hardworking Brazilian Silvestre de Sousa. What Dettori did was to demonstrate that he is still as good as anybody when it comes to the flair, the judgment and the sheer balls needed on the big occasions. He had a point to make after being dropped by Sheikh Mohammed’s Godolphin operation in 2013 and temporarily running off the rails, and he has made it. Ironically, de Sousa too had been dropped from the Godolphin team at the end of last season.
Other riders have discovered that accepting retainers can be a mixed blessing and that losing them is not necessarily a disaster: young Harry Bentley, dropped by the Qatari team as its No. 2 rider at the end of last season, showed his character by booting home winners for William Haggas, Hugo Palmer, Ralph Beckett, Henry Candy and others and moving significantly up the table.
Andrea Atzeni decided at the end of the year to jump ship as the Qatari No. 1 while the team’s replacement for Bentley, Oisin Murphy, has struggled to retain the prominence he enjoyed the previous year when winning the apprentice title with Andrew Balding. Retained riders may enjoy a financial cushion but they have to go where they are told and don’t always find themselves at the big meetings where they can pick up eye-catching rides.
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