GRAND PRAIRIE, Texas - Passion for the sport of horse racing has always been Frankie Dettori’s trademark, beautifully expressed by his “flying dismount” — a euphoric vault from the irons of his victorious mounts. But the most international of jockeys now acknowledges that, until recently, the inspirational wellspring he draws on had run dry.

The 33-year-old Italian-born rider has no doubts about what temporarily robbed him of the drive that made him one of the sport's best jockeys.

He had a terrifyingly close call with death on June 1, 2000, when a small plane in which he was a passenger crashed just after takeoff from Newmarket racecourse in England. His fellow passenger and racecourse rival Ray Cochrane dragged Dettori from the flaming wreckage, but was unable to save pilot Patrick Mackey.

Dettori, who has won almost every prestigious race in Europe and many others around the globe, suffered a broken ankle in the crash. The injury mended within a few months, but when he returned to riding, he found that his competitive edge also had been dulled.

“It took a lot more out of me than I thought,” he said Friday at Lone Star Park, where he will ride in four Breeders’ Cup races. “I was lucky to be alive, you know, but I guess I was a bit sour.”

The sourness evinced itself in what was, for Dettori, a lackadaisical approach to racing. The No. 1 jockey for Godolphin, the global equine combine of the royal family of Dubai, began passing on trips to some of the smaller, out-of-the-way race meetings in England in which he had competed.

Many of the newfound down days were devoted to spending more time with his family — he and his wife, Catherine, have four children and a fifth on the way — but Dettori also added a chapter to his resume by becoming a regular panelist on a British TV quiz show, “Question of Sport.”

Suddenly the sport that had been his lifeblood for so long was almost an afterthought.

“I was trying to be a family man and a jockey at the same time and I wasn’t doing either any good,” he said. “It wasn’t until this year, after almost four years, my wife said, ‘You better get out there and do your stuff.’”

That relatively gentle push worked wonders. At the beginning of 2004 Dettori committed himself to the draining battle for the British jockey championship, an honor he had captured three times before, but not since 1995.

The public goal-setting further steeled Dettori’s determination, when other top European jockeys questioned whether he could achieve his target. “I realized I had lost the respect of the other riders,” he said.

Since Dettori refuses to fly in small planes since his accident, he soon found himself regularly bouncing through the English countryside before dawn, making long drives to and from the back reaches of British racing.

Through the first part of the year, he watched as Kieren Fallon, the defending champion jockey known as “The Assassin” for his cold-blooded maneuvers on the racetrack, built a lead in the standings.

But in late summer, shortly after Fallon was arrested as part of an investigation of alleged race-fixing, Dettori came on with a rush and grabbed the lead. Shortly before he left for Texas, by way of Canada, Dettori sealed the championship — and learned to love the sport once again.

“My wife pushed me, but the rest snowballed itself,” he said. “I just put in hours in and worked every day and the rest is history.”

In addition to savoring the championship, Dettori also is proud that his just published autobiography, the succinctly titled “Frankie,” is on the British best-seller list.

The book details Dettori’s many racetrack exploits, including his three Breeders’ Cup victories — a Mile (Barathea in 1994) and two Turfs (Daylami in 1999 and Fantastic Light in 2001). And also what is considered one of the most unlikely exploits in racing history — his Sept. 28, 1996, sweep of the entire seven-race card at Ascot.

It touches on Dettori’s difficult relationship with his father, Gianfranco, himself a 10-time champion jockey in Italy.

Wanting his son to follow in his footsteps as a top rider, the elder Dettori sent Frankie to England at the age of 14 to learn the racing ropes working for Italy-born trainer Luca Camani.

“I came to Newmarket, not knowing anyone and not having a single word of English,” Dettori told the Guardian newspaper recently, describing his arrival in the foreign land. “… It was terrible. I was allowed to ring my dad once a week — on a Monday for 10 minutes. I would be in floods of tears, begging him, ‘Please let me come home.’ But there was no sympathy. He just told me to stick it out. I had to do this so that, one day, I would become champion jockey.”

After he fulfilled his father’s expectation, Dettori said he got so angry with his father that he stopped talking to him for two years.

“I’ve always asked him the question, ‘What if I had failed? How would I have felt?’ He always says, ‘I can’t answer that because you didn’t fail. Look at you now.’”

Though the two have never been able to completely resolve their differences over the baptism of fire, Dettori the younger said Friday that the period of reflection that followed the Newmarket crash did allow him to achieve a measure of understanding of his father’s behavior.

“My dad had a very tough upbringing, and it was his way of loving me, being strict and hard,” he said. “… It took me 33 years to realize that.”

Time for reflection is a luxury for the rejuvenated rider, who won the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile on Saturday on 28-1 shot Wilko.

Dettori barely had time to pose for the winner’s circle photo before resuming his whirlwind world tour, which began with a flight to Toronto for last Sunday’s $1.5 million Canadian International, which he won aboard Sulamani.

After the Breeders’ Cup, he will jump a flight to Australia for Tuesday’s Melbourne Cup, one of the few jewels of international racing to so far evade his grasp. Win or lose aboard Godolphin’s Mamool, he will fly back to England on Wednesday and be raring to go racing again on the weekend.

“People always ask me, “don’t you get jet-lagged?’’ he said Friday, shortly before heading out to ride long shot Skipaslew in the Lone Star Derby. “I haven’t got time to get jet-lagged. I don’t stay long enough.”

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