Frankie Dettori may have had a quiet start to Royal Ascot 2023 but he’s more than made up for that since winning the Queen’s Vase on Wednesday and on Thursday winning his ninth Ascot Gold Cup on the John and Thady Gosden trained Courage Mon Ami.
Courage Mon Ami was a name not many outside of the Gosden camp had heard of at the start of the season. Unraced at two, he wasn’t seen until the September of his three year old career, winning two modest novice stakes events, after which he was afforded the indignity of a gelding operation over the winter.
Pitched into handicap company at Goodwood on his first start at four, he won well enough without the result crying out that he was a champion in the making. However, John Gosden has seen plenty horses through the years and knows a good one when it comes along and the gelding had shown him enough to persuade him and his joint-trainer Thady Gosden to pitch him in at the deep end.
In the race Dettori took the inside route and found the gaps up the straight to beat the favourite Coltrane by three quarters of a length with another three and three quarter lengths back to the third, former Gold Cup winner Subjectivist.
Dettori, riding in his final Royal Ascot, came back to huge cheering as he performed his trademark flying dismount in the winner’s enclosure.
Describing how the race was won Dettori felt fortune played into his hands. “I knew there would be pace and I wanted to swing out wide but Stephane Pasquier kept me in and actually won me the race. I thought, ‘I’ll cut the corner and see what happens’. Then it happened.”
The winner was yet another big race success for Courage Mon Ami’s sire Frankel, his third winner of the meeting and a clear statement that he’s taken the mantle of his own sire Galileo as Europe’s leading sire.