For more than three decades, Frankie Dettori lived a life of fame and fortune most could only dream of.
The charismatic jockey made Royal Ascot his playground, rode seven winners in a single afternoon and turned his success into a global brand worth millions.
And yet the world’s most famous horse racing star now stands bankrupt, unable to pay a £765,000 tax bill and leaving creditors staring at empty company accounts.
Dettori, 55, estimated to have earned around £20 million from racing alone during his stellar career, now has nothing left to those he owes.
So how did the once-invincible pint-sized Italian superstar lose it all?
The answer lies in a toxic mix of lavish spending, drugs turmoil, disastrous financial advice and a failed tax avoidance scheme.
Dettori became racing’s showman-in-chief with his winning fist pumps and legendary flying dismounts transcending the sport.
When he rode seven winners in seven races at Ascot in June 1996 – at odds of more than 25,000-1 – he was catapulted into popular culture, and the trappings of fame.
Frankie Dettori and his wife Catherine Dettori in 2023
The charismatic jockey made Royal Ascot his playground, rode seven winners in a single afternoon and turned his success into a global brand worth millions
Dettori, 55, estimated to have earned around £20 million from racing alone during his stellar career, now has nothing left to those he owes
Racing fans can rent the impressive country house of superstar jockey Frankie Dettori for £15,000 a month
‘At the time I didn’t realise what I achieved,’ Dettori later recalled.
‘It wasn’t until the next day when I opened the newspapers and I opened my front door and there were cameramen and paparazzi there. I realised then this was really big.
‘I put the telly on, I was in the news. It changed my life. I did a lot of chat shows, was on Question Of Sport, Top Of The Pops, morning TV and at the time I was one of the first racing people to do so.’
Ferrari-fanatic Dettori’s name quickly became a licence to print money.
He lent his name to a chain of restaurants with Marco Pierre White, brought out a cologne, a cookbook, and even a range of frozen pizzas.
Cash piled high from sponsorships, endorsements, TV work and corporate engagements.
Meanwhile, racing made him extremely wealthy. With more than 3,300 winners to his name, Dettori’s career earnings are widely estimated at around £20 million.
In 2019 – Dettori’s most lucrative year – the horses he rode earned £7.3 million in prize money alone.
Dettori said in 2020, the year he was awarded an MBE: ‘My life is like putting a treadmill as fast as it can go and jumping on it – and I’m on it at the moment, going a million miles an hour.
‘I’ve been in the fast lane for the last 25 years and I’ve become addicted to it.’
It was a telling admission from a man whose taste for the high life had already led him into serious trouble.
In 2012, Dettori tested positive for cocaine after a race in France and was handed a six-month worldwide ban and his reputation damaged.
‘I was the main news of the day,’ he would later recall.
‘The second news was Obama was re-elected for a second term. There was a war in Syria and there was two and a half million people with no water in New York. And I was the main news that I’d failed a drug test. And I thought, my God…
‘Catherine (Dettori’s wife) gave me a real kick up the ass. She said, ‘I’ve been married to you for almost 20 years and you’re always bragging about yourself, how good you are, blah, blah, blah.
”Well now that we’re in dire straits, get off your ass and show me how good you are because we need it’.
‘And that was a good wake-up call; I went out there and tried to prove her wrong – and I did.’
Preparing to return after his ban, Dettori took to the BBC to address his drug-taking and battles with depression. ‘I didn’t kill anyone,’ he told Claire Balding.
‘It was only done as recreational. I wasn’t trying to enhance my sports performance. It was something stupid that I did and I came clean.’
However, the damage was done.
In 2012, Dettori rode 398 races, won 51 and earned around £1.9 million in prize money.
On his return to the sport the following year, having split from Sheik Mohammed’s Godolphin racing outfit, the phone barely rang and he went 51 races without a winner.
‘Nobody would touch me,’ the father-of-five would later tell Piers Morgan, and hinted of financial struggles in another interview: ‘People think jockeys make millions – we don’t. I’m one of the lucky ones.
Vinnie Jones, the former footballer turned film star with jockey Frankie Dettori, arrive at Ascot race course
Lewis Hamilton of Great Britain and Mercedes GP speaks with Frankie Dettori on the podium after his victory in the Formula One Grand Prix of Great Britain at Silverstone Circuit in 2015
In 1993, he was arrested after being found with a wrap of cocaine outside a London nightclub, an incident that cost him a lucrative contract in Hong Kong
‘But I spoil my children, they’ve all gone to private school and we always had a decent holiday so money goes. When you have to multiply everything by five you need a big wallet.’
The cocaine ban was not Dettori’s first brush with scandal.
In 1993, he was arrested after being found with a wrap of cocaine outside a London nightclub, an incident that cost him a lucrative contract in Hong Kong.
In his autobiography he admitted that he became a ‘tearaway, a night-club wolf, a drugs dabbler who was perilously close to seeing his career go permanently off the rails’.
In a BBC Newsnight programme he also admitted taking diuretics, chocolate laxatives and Lasix water pills to keep his weight down, before the Jockey Club outlawed them in 1998.
Dettori signed up for Celebrity Big Brother in 2013 after struggling for cash and was reportedly paid £500,000.
Dettori, who has five children with Catherine, 51, whom he married in 1997, was candid about quickly his money disappeared.
He said in 2011: ‘My main priority is to make enough money to put my five kids through private school.
‘I can survive on less, so the focus is on the kids. Then, I have to think about covering their university costs. Some will go, some might not.
‘But then there are cars, the list is endless. I was a rich man before I had my wife and kids.’
He added in the same interview: ‘I try to invest in property and things that will hopefully appreciate, but if I want to go on a flash holiday with my wife to say the Maldives or Thailand, I don’t think twice about paying first class to go there.
‘I enjoy going out with friends and drinking nice wine. I suppose I can’t say I’m a real saver as there’s no point in working your arse off and not enjoying what you’ve got.’
‘I enjoy going out with friends and drinking nice wine. I suppose I can’t say I’m a real saver as there’s no point in working your arse off and not enjoying what you’ve got.’
The Dettoris have been based for years in the racing bubble of Newmarket, Suffolk.
In 2003, they bought a sprawling Suffolk mansion for £570,000 from Noel Cunningham-Reid, a nephew of Earl Mountbatten.
They later carried out a ‘bloody expensive’ renovation funded by the £2.15m sale of their nearby 15-acre, six-bedroom house in 2015.
Jockey Frankie Dettori celebrates winning the Juddmonte International Stakes with horse Mostahdaf on day one of the Sky Bet Ebor Festival at York Racecourse
By 2023, the seven-bedroom neoclassical home – with swimming pool, cinema room and grand marble staircase – was being rented out for £15,000 a month.
Meanwhile, Dettori was selling 30-second videos to fans online for £82-a-go.
Perhaps it was telling sign of the financial strain building behind the scenes.
Dettori’s bankrupting saga can be traced back to 2012, the same year he was banned for taking drugs.
He was advised by a financial expert to adopt a tax avoidance strategy, later deemed a ‘sham’ by HM Revenue and Customs.
The scheme, known as ‘disguised remuneration’, saw large ‘tax-deductible’ payments paid into a trust which then made large ‘non-taxable’ payments back to Dettori.
For years, the matter went through the courts – even as Dettori appeared on I’m A Celebrity in 2023, picking up a reported £500,000 fee.
It was only 2024 that a court order granting him anonymity was lifted, with the star unmasked after an application by the press.
Dettori eventually declared himself bankrupt last March and this week it emerged he was unable to pay his owed taxes and £6,391 due to a car leasing company.
An update to the liquidation of Frankie Dettori Limited and Newmarket Activities Limited published on Companies House, revealed there were no funds left to repay creditors.
Combined with liquidator costs, the total £888,799 billis now set to be largely footed by the taxpayer.
In a statement shared with the Daily Mail, Dettori admitted he was ‘saddened and embarrassed’ by the outcome – and warned others not to make the same mistake, urging them to ‘take a stronger rein’ over their financial affairs.
‘Bankruptcy is a major decision and its consequences will affect me for many years,’ he added.
Dettori eventually declared himself bankrupt last March and this week it emerged he was unable to pay his owed taxes and £6,391 due to a car leasing company
Dettori’s racing career, which began back in the 1980s, appeared to reach a conclusion in December 2022, when he announced he would retire
Dettori’s racing career, which began back in the 1980s, appeared to reach a conclusion in December 2022, when he announced he would retire.
Just days before what was billed as his final bow at Ascot in October 2023, he performed a dramatic U-turn revealing plans to move to California and keep riding.
He relocated to Florida last year, with the Dettoris understood to retain a small ‘downsized’ property on the grounds of their Newmarket estate.
The star is expected to finally retire next month after completing scheduled races in South America.
From there, he will remain in the sport, stepping into a full-time role as an ambassador for Amo Racing, the operation owned by high-profile football agent Kia Joorabchian.
Under the terms of his insolvency, Dettori is due to be automatically discharged from bankruptcy on March 17.
