Day Dettori Lost Bookies £50m

We mark the tenth anniversary of 'Dettori Day', the day the Italian jockey broke the hearts of Britain's bookies with his 'magnificent seven'winners, winning his legion of fans in excess of £60 million pounds.

The biggest winner of all was William Hillcustomer, Lancashire builder Darren Yates, from Morecambe, whose £62 wager, consisting of a 50p Super Heinz and £1 each/way accumulator won him a cool £550,823 from William Hill, making him the biggest single winner on the day. And this despite the fact that when he left home that morning it was with the words of his wife Annaley ringing in his ears - "You've wasted quite enough money on that Frankie Dettori, don't keep betting on him."

Darren, now 40, was the phenomenal success story to come out of the day, his fledgling building firm was struggling to make ends meet and all of a sudden he was halfway to being a millionaire. Whilst Yates admits that the instant success almost went to his head, buying racehorses and losing over £40,000 in one day at York, thankfully this tale has had a happy ending. Supported by family and friends, he invested the remainder of his winnings in to the building business and a decade on, it is now firmly established as one the biggest house-builders in the North-West, with annual turnover in excess of £10 million per annum.

"It was the single most memorable and - most costly day for bookies -race meeting in racing history. Tens of thousands of Dettori fans picked up winnings of three, four, five and even six figures. Every betting shop in the country was financially devastated" said William Hill's spokesman Graham Sharpe, whose book about that unique day, 'The Magnificent Seven', has just been published in paperback by Aurum Press at £7.99.

In retrospect, it provided a wonderful shop window for the bookmaking industry which proved that it could suffer a loss of over £50 million and still come out smiling - albeit through gritted teeth - and paying everyone in full. It was certainly Darren's greatest day - and Annaley has been a Dettori fan ever since.