Outside racing he has worked in TV, appearing as a team captain on A Question of Sport from 2002 to 2004, and opened several Italian restaurants in partnership with chef Marco Pierre White.

[3]: 3  As a child, Dettori was more interested in football than racing, but that changed when he was eight and his father bought him a palomino pony called Silvia.

[3]: 12  It was at first a culture shock, as he had to adapt to a new language, and strange food and drink such as Heinz tinned ravioli and orange squash.

[1]: 21  In 1989 Dettori became champion apprentice jockey with 75 wins and rode his first winner of a group race, Legal Case in the Select Stakes at Goodwood.

[2] Still only nineteen, Dettori became the first teenager since Lester Piggott to win more than 100 races in a season, finishing on a total of 149, fourth in the champion jockey table.

[1]: 27 [4] Before the beginning of the 1993 season he lost his position with Cumani, over his failure to let the trainer know that he was considering taking up the offer of a lucrative contract in Hong Kong.

[1]: 27  By now Dettori was enjoying a party lifestyle and in April 1993 was arrested in London for possession of cocaine, which put paid to his prospective contract to ride in Hong Kong.

[1]: 28-29  There was a second victory in the Ascot Gold Cup on Drum Taps, and two Group 1 wins on the sprint mare Lochsong, trained by Ian Balding.

[8] On 1 June 2000, Dettori and fellow jockey Ray Cochrane were aboard a Piper Seneca plane which crashed on takeoff at Newmarket on its way to Goodwood in Sussex.

On 2 June 2007, released for the occasion from his contractual duties with Godolphin, he rode the favourite Authorized to a comfortable win for trainer Peter Chapple-Hyam.

In the spring of that year, Godolphin hired two younger jockeys, Mickaël Barzalona and Silvestre de Sousa, to ride alongside Dettori who found himself "jocked off" in big races.

He admitted to having used cocaine, telling Clare Balding in an interview on Channel 4:"Things were going bad, I was depressed and I guess a moment of weakness and I fell for it and I've only got myself to blame".

[2] The trainer and jockey fell out over Dettori's rides at 2022 Royal Ascot, in particular that on Stradivarius when he was beaten a length into third place in the Gold Cup.

[17] On 17 December 2022 during an interview with ITV Racing, Dettori announced that he would be retiring at the end of the following season, with his final rides likely to come at the November 2023 Breeders' Cup meeting at Santa Anita Park in California.

[2] Dettori started his 2023 farewell tour with a ten-week stint in the United States, based at Santa Anita Park for its winter racing.

A treble on the first day of the meeting included a win in the San Antonio Stakes on 2022 Dubai World Cup winner Country Grammer, trained by Bob Baffert.

[4] During the summer of 2023, Dettori added to his tally of British Group 1 and Classic races, winning the 2000 Guineas on 6 May on Chaldean for trainer Andrew Balding and then achieving a double at Epsom on 2 June with wins in the Coronation Cup on Emily Upjohn and the Oaks on Soul Sister (horse), both trained by John and Thady Gosden.

[22] His first Grade 1 win of his stay in California came in March 2024, when he rode Newgate, trained by Baffert, to victory in the Santa Anita Handicap.

[27] In 2004 Dettori teamed up with chef Marco Pierre White to open a chain of several Italian restaurants called Frankie's Bar and Grill.

[28] Dettori made use of an alleged tax avoidance scheme devised by Paul Baxendale-Walker, which led to a legal dispute with HMRC.