Dettori: Snow Ridge 'my biggest chance yet'

Frankie Dettori is out to lay his most painful ghost to rest when Snow Ridge lines up for his Godolphin bosses in Saturday’s Vodafone Derby.

The world’s most famous Flat race is notable by its absence from the otherwise impressive curriculum vitae of the popular Italian rider.

The 33-year-old admits that he is already starting to suffer sleepless nights as the big day approaches for him and Snow Ridge.

The best Dettori has managed in the Derby from no less than 11 rides in the race is second place on Tamure in 1995, although he has won the Oaks three times.

“I have won many of the world’s major races, but this is probably the most important one and the fact is that my name isn’t on the list,” he said.

Though he will console himself with the fact that it took the legendary Sir Gordon Richards 28 attempts to break his Derby duck, the clock is ticking for Dettori, who reckons he will have only 10 more attempts at most to win the great race.

In Snow Ridge, however, he has a horse he feels will give him his “biggest chance yet”, especially in the absence of Yeats.

If he listens to Saeed bin Suroor, the trainer of the UltimateBet.com 2000 Guineas runner-up, it will certainly boost his hopes.

“He has given me the confidence that he is going to run a big race,” said bin Suroor.

“He is working very well and I feel that he will get the trip, even though I have always really thought he was a mile-and-a-quarter horse.

“I really do feel he will run very well for us.”

But in response, Dettori smiles and says: “Every year Saeed tells me that it’s going to be my turn and now I just laugh and say thanks.

“But this year I wonder if he might be right.

“Snow Ridge is a very well-balanced colt, straightforward and with a good turn of foot and I think he has an absolutely serious chance. I don’t think I’ve had a better one.

“It didn’t take Einstein to work out that Dubai Millennium was going to struggle to stay a mile and a half and even though Cape Verdi won the Guineas well, she was a filly against the colts, which was always going to be hard.

“To win it would be to fulfil my dreams. I would be lying if I said that I didn’t feel some pressure. I feel it more than any other race in the world.

“I am already thinking about the race and running it through in my mind.

“It would be a great accomplishment to win it, but that doesn’t mean I would stop if I did win. Arsenal won the league this year, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t going to try and win it again next season.”

One man who could be out to stop Dettori’s dreams from coming true is Marcus Tregoning, the former trainer of Snow Ridge.

Tregoning sent out Snow Ridge to win last year’s Royal Lodge Stakes at Ascot before his sale to Godolphin and is in no doubt that the son of Indian Lodge possesses the required class and stamina to win at Epsom.

“He has an awful lot of natural speed,” Tregoning says. “He was certainly the best two-year-old I have trained.

“If he gets the trip then he has got a burst of speed which might just win it for him.

“And I think he will stay because he had a half-brother, by Spectrum, who wasn’t top-class but he did get a mile and a half. And these Weinstock mares do always tend to have plenty of stamina.

“The way he raced in the Guineas, where he was doing all his best work at the finish, would also give you confidence for him getting a mile and a half.”

Confidence has never been a quality lacking in Frankie Dettori and buoyed by the encouragement of those who know the horse best, it seems this really could be his year.