Frankie Dettori heartbroken at deadly impact of coronavirus

Frankie Dettori has spoken of his anguish at the "heart-breaking" effect the Covid-19 outbreak is having on his home country and his concerns at the prospect of long-term damage to the racing industry.

More than 10,000 people in Italy have died from the virus and Dettori is particularly concerned for his mother, who lives half an hour from Milan in the hardest-hit north of the country.

"She's had pneumonia in the past so she has to be really careful because if she takes to this virus she may not make it through so I'm a bit concerned about her," the jockey said.

"Dad goes to Morocco in the winter so he's in lockdown, he's 79. So I've got parents that have to be careful. It's a worry for everyone, it's touched everybody's lives."

Dettori has raised more than €6,000 for the Italian Red Cross through a Gofundme campaign in the light of ever-increasing death tolls on the daily news.

"If you picture all those coffins in a field and imagine how big that field would be it's heart-breaking," he said on The Guest List, a BBC 5 Live Sports Special.

"It seems endless and every day we hope that you can read something better but it doesn't look like it's letting up. Having friends and family in Italy is a concern.

"Luckily at the moment, touch wood, most of my family are fine but it's been three weeks and they haven't left the house. A lot of properties in Milan you live in are flats and a lot of people are kind of confined in their own little prison.

"The mood of the people is good but it's getting a bit frustrating because it seems like every day it's getting worse and worse, we haven't seen it get any better. We are just praying day by day."

Dettori is riding out four mornings a week in Newmarket, where he is holed up with his wife, five children and his visiting sister who has been unable to return to Italy.

"It's quite difficult because the trainer has to shout at you because we have to keep two metres away!" he said. "The horses still have to go out, they still have to be exercised, they still have to be fed. But we're taking precautions, we're wearing gloves, we're wearing masks. We want to try to beat this thing.

"At least I'm occupied in some way but it's quite surreal, that on a beautiful spring morning you're thinking 'it's looking great and the racing season's going to start' but we're all kind of blocked."

Dettori admitted to feeling in limbo, as he waits for news on whether racing will be able to resume in May.

The man who rode 19 Group 1 winners in a memorable 2019 is keeping in shape ready for the action to start and said: "I'm doing plenty of walks round my field, I've got a gym but it's very hard to get motivated when you can't see the light at the end of the tunnel.

"At the moment we're still in a dark tunnel, we don't know when we're going to start.

"There's no point keeping yourself 100 per cent fit because there's no need to and all you're doing is just knackering your body before you even start."

Dettori admitted his diet has changed, with no racing taking place, and said: "I'm eating twice a day, I usually don't. Having my sister here from Italy doesn't help because she's a great cook. She cooks great pasta, the meatballs are my favourite so it's quite difficult to avoid temptation!

"But we've still got a month. The horses are still getting looked after, still getting fed, still getting trained. We'll be ready to rumble as soon as it's safe to do so. We're not sitting with our feet up having a holiday."

However, Dettori voiced fears that the coronavirus outbreak could do long-term damage to racing.

"We're not going to come out of this smelling of roses," he said. "The economy's going to go down and horseracing is a luxury, people are buying horses to have fun so we might not have the investors any more. Then we might lose sponsorship. It's going to hurt every sport and we have to be ready for it."

More to read:

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'I shed a tear': Frankie Dettori relives Enable's date with destiny in the Arc

The Frankie phenomenon: how Dettori became racing's irreplaceable star

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