Flatter: Frankie, thank you so much for changing your mind

The farewell tour kept going for Frankie Dettori, but the scheduling of a retirement party never felt right. So he canceled it.

“I didn’t expect to have one of my best years for a long time, probably the best I’ve had since 2019,” Dettori told Racing Post.

Frankly, Frankie, no one was surprised. That is because no one was ready to see his career end after a mere 35 years. As my wife Tina says when a certain someone wants to change the subject on her, “Don’t put a dot on it.”

We have been there so many times before, right? Not from Dettori’s point of view. From our own.

Muhammad Ali and Sugar Ray Leonard and Evander Holyfield and George Foreman turned retirement into a 10-letter synonym for we’ll be right back. I was there to see one or another of them introduced into the ring before someone else’s fight, the whole time knowing their tuxedos would be exchanged for boxing trunks. It was only a matter of months. And millions.

It was 32 years ago next month when Magic Johnson stopped the world to announce he was HIV positive and done with basketball. Seven weeks later at the old L.A. Sports Arena, my friend Hayes and I arrived very early for a Lakers-Clippers game on Christmas day. There attracting attention by shooting hundreds of free throws was one Earvin Johnson. In another seven weeks he was in the all-star game, and we know the rest of the story. As Hayes correctly observed in 1991, Magic was more about the news conference than he was about the news. Dodgers fans will remind us that he still is.

Sinatra and Streisand used the R word. They declared enough was enough. Until it was not. I still feel a little betrayed after paying all that money to see the Doobie Brothers’ last concert 41 years ago in Berkeley, Calif., even if I did get Tom Johnston and Michael McDonald on the same stage. By the way, the Doobies are touring Canada right now. Just listen to the music.

A former vice president who lost elections for president and then governor told us in 1962, “You don’t have Nixon to kick around anymore.” If only.

Dettori is not Nixon or the Doobie Brothers or Magic Johnson. Their non-retirements evoked eyerolls. Dettori’s announcement Thursday was more about a nodding of heads.

Like those others in their time, Dettori still has a lot on his fastball, even if he said he was surprised by it. Six Group 1 wins this year were evidence of that, as if he needed further proof.

Dettori originally planned a whirlwind around Europe, and he is in the midst of that. He rode his last ever Arc this month. He will add his last ever British Champions day next week, even if it will not be as grand as it impossibly was in 1996, the afternoon of his magnificent seven. Time will pass, and it will not be a surprise when Dettori returns to ride at ParisLongchamp and Ascot again next fall. As Count Basie used to say, “One more twice.”

The retirement began to crack when he amended his declaration that the Breeders’ Cup at Santa Anita would signal his sign-off. In June he said he would kick the can down the road and across another ocean to Australia.

“Hopefully I can finish my career with a Melbourne Cup win,” he said. Now, though, it looks like he might not get a ride in that race that stops a nation. Just like Newgate never got Dettori to the gate for the Kentucky Derby. Deep down only Dettori can say whether those unrequited accomplishments were among the reasons he postponed his exit.

Dettori already is playing with house money. It was 23 years ago when he survived the fiery crash of a small plane in England. He and a former jockey got out with their lives. The pilot did not.

He missed the first half of the 2013 racing year after he was reported to have tested positive for cocaine. His days as Godolphin’s main man were over, but Dettori promised to rebuild his reputation. Without knowing he was about to reach the heights of a career renaissance, he proved to be a man of his word.

Dettori has become an ambassador for racing, the very face of the sport. That used to be said of Bob Baffert, but the past 2 1/2 years have rewritten that script. America really does not have a candidate for that distinction. Neither does the animal world. Horses do not stick around long enough to be enduring stars anymore.

What we have with Dettori is a willing emissary for racing, even if he can be a demanding one. He does not suffer fools gladly. Trust me. More than once I have been that fool.

If he is surrounded to the claustrophobic point of being unable to move in the winner’s circle or the paddock after a big win, he will bark that he needs room to breathe. Tell him where he should go to have an impromptu chat, and he is quick to remind that he is not working for an organ grinder. I know one spokesperson who runs racing news conferences who learned the hard way that the bottle of water placed on Dettori’s table after a race had damned well better be ice cold.

Dettori has earned the right to be insistent on at least a morsel of common sense and the decency that should be afforded a fellow human who no more wants to be treated like a wind-up toy than any of us. For those of us in the media who ask for his time and not at the last second, he has all day. For some stranger who begs for his time while he is obviously busy being pulled in six different directions, take a hike.

Turning 53 in December, Frankie Dettori has become Nolan Ryan. Or Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. Or Tom Brady. If that reads like hyperbole, the challenge then is to name a star who remains at the top of the game who means more to our sport right now. I’ll hang up and listen.

For professional athletes and performers, the money can be great, but competition and stage themselves are addictive nectars. Anyone who has not been in those arenas at the tip-top level cannot and will not understand. Nor can anyone who has not had to work their aspirations off to get there. It is no wonder the greatest of the greats want to take a break and maybe even be done with it. That is until the absence of the competition and spotlight turn into in an insatiable jones.

If Dettori wants to take one more flying leap off a winning horse, maybe even cloaked in roses next May, who would begrudge him?

More important, if he wants to keep doing it after that, why not?