Lanfranco Dettori (; born 15 December 1970), better known as Frankie Dettori, is an Italian horse racing jockey based in the United Kingdom. Dettori has been British flat racing Champion Jockey three times and has ridden the winners of more than 500 Group races. This includes 20 winners of the English classics. His most celebrated achievement was riding all seven winners on British Festival of racing Day at Ascot Racecourse in 1996. He is the son of the Sardinian jockey Gianfranco Dettori, who was a prolific winner in Italy. He was described by the late Lester Piggott as the best jockey currently riding. Since the end of 2012, Dettori has been operating as a freelance, having split with Godolphin Racing, for whom he was stable jockey and had most of his big race victories. On 5 December 2012, he was suspended from riding for six months after being found guilty of taking a prohibited substance, believed to be cocaine. Career Born in Milan, Italy, Dettori's first experience with horses was at the age of twelve, and his father bought him a Palomino pony. This had some impact on him, as he rode the horse often. When he was 13 Dettori left school to become a stable boy and apprentice jockey. The following year, he went to Great Britain, where he apprenticed with trainer Luca Cumani at Newmarket in 1985, becoming a stable jockey soon after. In 1990, Dettori became the first teenager since Lester Piggott to ride 100 winners in one season. His first win came at the age of 16 in Turin in November 1986, while his first victory in Britain was the following June. Further success followed, with numerous winners in Group 1 races. On 28 September 1996 he achieved the feat of winning all seven races on a single day at Ascot Racecourse. This achievement was subsequently commemorated in a painting by the noted equine artist Barrie Linklater, commisisoned by the Ascot Authority. He was the subject of This Is Your Life in 1998, when he was surprised by Michael Aspel at the International Sportsman's Club in London. In a 2010 interview with the BBC's Newsnight, he admitted that he used to take diuretic drugs to keep his weight down. Dettori said he had used a wide range of substances before the Jockey Club banned them in June 1998 after a spate of positive drug tests revealed