FRANKIE DETTORI’S legendary partnership with Stradivarius looks to have ended after he was replaced by Andrea Atzeni for the Goodwood Cup.
Dettori, 51, suffered a nightmare passage on the superstar stayer en route to finishing third in last month’s Ascot Gold Cup.
Dettori will not ride Stradivarius at Goodwood as the superstar stayer aims for a fifth Goodwood Cup
Atzeni has won the Goodwood Cup twice on Stradivarius
The horse’s owner Bjorn Nielsen has now confirmed Atzeni, Dettori’s fellow Italian, will ride the eight-year-old next Tuesday.
Nielsen said: “Frankie Dettori, who has enjoyed a great relationship with Stradivarius and ridden him to many brilliant stakes victories – more than he has any other horse – will by mutual agreement give up the ride to Andrea Atzeni in the Goodwood Cup.
“Frankie remains not only ‘the Strad’s’ biggest fan but a very good friend and, of course, I look forward to seeing him continue his phenomenal career as one of the greatest big-race jockeys of all time.”
Stradivarius is a best-price 3-1 to win a fourth Goodwood Cup, while his Ascot superior Kyprios is the 5-2 favourite.
Atzeni rode Stradivarius to victory in the Goodwood Cup in 2017, winning the Queen’s Vase at Royal Ascot the same year.
In fact, Atzeni has never lost on Strad in three runs and the duo successfully defended the Goodwood Cup in 2018.
Dettori’s Ascot nightmare last month summed up a torrid few weeks for the world’s most famous jockey.
In addition to what trainer John Gosden called ‘overcomplicating’ the Gold Cup ride, Dettori also got turned over on odds-on jolly Reach For The Moon.
And he failed to remove the hood on Lord North, a matter of days after falling out of the stalls in the Oaks on Emily Upjohn.
It all led to an 11-day ‘sabbatical’ between Gosden and Dettori.
The duo are back together now but Nielsen – who accused Dettori of ignoring orders – made no bones about the Gold Cup debacle.
He said: “With what happened last year, twice where Frankie sat so far back and down on the rail, he was told, ‘Whatever you do, don’t sit on the rail and get far back on the horse this year’.
“For some reason, he went and did what he did. By the time we had a chance to get out again, it was an impossible task to make up the ground.
“If you look at how he was travelling when they turned in and how the winner was travelling, the winner was being ridden strongly and so were some others.
“‘The Strad’ was sitting there on the bridle turning in and through no fault of his own he didn’t get a run. It was not a case of the others having younger legs than him.
“It was a case of he got no run and he was put in a position where he had no chance, unfortunately.”
