Frankie Dettori’s first Royal Ascot winner came in the meeting’s first race, the Queen Anne Stakes, in 1990. He had to wait just over two years for the second, on Drum Taps in the Gold Cup in 1992, and the same horse was his only winner at the 1993 Royal meeting, too. It is fair to say that Dettori has quickened the pace just a little since then – so much so, in fact, that on Friday, 30 years to the day after Markofdistinction got home by a neck in the Queen Anne, he crossed the line in front at the Royal meeting for the 70th time in his career. Only Lester Piggott, with an incredible 116 in an era when the meeting only covered four days, and the late Pat Eddery, with 73, have had more success at Flat racing’s most prestigious festival. Dettori’s milestone arrived aboard Fanny Logan, a 17-2 shot in the Group Two Hardwicke Stakes, who quickened clear of a field that included Anthony Van Dyck, last year’s Derby winner, and Defoe, another with a previous Group One win to his credit. The four-year-old was an appropriate winner, embodying two distinct periods of Dettori’s career: 18 years as Godolphin operation’s number one jockey and, more recently, an Indian summer as stable jockey to John Gosden in Newmarket, after a spell when a six-month ban for a cocaine positive seemed to be ushering his time in the saddle towards a premature conclusion. Dettori has only recently had his first rides in Godolphin blue since the very public parting of the ways between the jockey and Sheikh Mohammed, the operation’s founder, in 2012. Fanny Logan, though, carries the maroon-and-white colours that were aboard the Sheikh’s many champions in the pre-Godolphin era, which have now passed to one of his daughters, Sheikha Al Jalila. They were previously worn by Dettori aboard six Royal Ascot winners, including Starborough in the St James’s Palace Stakes in 1997 and, most recently, Seba in the Chesham Stakes in 2001. When Ryan Moore reached a milestone of his own with a 60th Royal Ascot winner earlier in the week, he played it down in typically dismissive fashion. “You wouldn’t really give it any thought, would you?” he said. Moore might not but Dettori has a little more respect for the Royal meeting’s significance and traditions, though he did concede to having lost count of his running total before the race. “I actually forgot I was one short of 70 winners,” he said, as he was presented with a commemorative saddle-cloth, which will be auctioned off for Ascot’s charities. “That’s another milestone. It’s brilliant to have 70, that’s a lot and I want number 71 now.” Gosden has won three trainers’ championships in the last five years since Dettori became his number one rider, landed the Derby with Golden Horn in 2015 and has also won the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe, a race that had previously eluded him for nearly 30 years, three times: once with Golden Horn and twice with Enable. “Frankie is belying his years and it’s a pleasure to be around him,” Gosden said after Fanny Logan’s success. “His knowledge and his feel when riding work in the mornings, he’s one of the few who is extremely accurate when talking about horses in the mornings [and] what they need and what they don’t need, and he is a great race-reader and a fabulous jockey. We are lucky to have him about.” Dettori seems unlikely to retain his title as the Royal meeting’s leading rider this week, having taken the prize for the first time since 2004 in 2019, although his affinity for Ascot in particular is such that even with at least three winners to find on Saturday to overhaul Jim Crowley, few would dare to dismiss him entirely. Dettori mount Kimari was the only runner to launch any sort of challenge to Golden Horde in the Group One Commonwealth Cup, the day’s feature race, but Wesley Ward’s filly was still one and a half lengths behind the frontrunning winner at the line as Golden Horde and Adam Kirby recorded a decisive success. The Commonwealth Cup, which was first run in 2015, is the most recent Group One addition to the Royal Ascot schedule and Clive Cox, who saddled Golden Horde, is now the first trainer to win all three of the Group One sprints at the Royal meeting, having taken the King’s Stand Stakes with Profitable in 2016 and the Diamond Jubilee Stakes with Lethal Force – the sire of Golden Horde – three years earlier. All three were ridden by Kirby, whose association with Cox is one of the most enduring in the business and who has now ridden six of the trainer’s eight winners at Royal Ascot. “We always trained him last year with the knowledge that with the right sort of behaviour, he would be a better horse this year as well,” Cox said. “It is just fantastic when it goes right and dreams are realised.” Oisín Murphy completed a tidy piece of business for Nick Bell, the son of the trainer Michael, as The Lir Jet overhauled Golden Pal in the final strides to win the Norfolk Stakes. Nick Bell bought the colt privately after he made just £8,000 at the Doncaster sales last year, before selling him to Sheikh Fahad al-Thani after he broke the all-aged track record on his debut at Yarmouth last month. “It was a good bit of business for all involved,” Michael Bell said, and it could get better, as The Lir Jet could now line up for the Group One Nunthorpe Stakes later in the year.