If Frankie Dettori were a betting man, he’d have staked his jockey’s silks, his golf clubs and perhaps even his six-figure Ferrari on his new baby being another boy. But the racing champion “couldn’t have been happier” when the odds went against him and Ella Jade (a sister for 18-month-old Leo) weighed in last month at 5lb 3oz. The racing ace declares himself “shocked but pleasantly surprised to have fathered a daughter.

“Men apparently dominate in the Dettori family,” says Frankie’s wife Catherine, “so we fully expected all our children to be male. I was so unprepared for a girl that Ella had to wear Leo’s hand-me-downs in blue for the first two weeks.”

Ella’s arrival is a true affirmation of life for Newmarket’s golden couple, taking place just ten months after Frankie’s horrifying brush with death, when the light plane he and fellow jockey Ray Cochrane were in crashed, killing the pilot. “God must have left it for us,” says Frankie. “It’s miraculous, a blessing. If things had gone only a little differently I would not be here now. Nor, of course, would Ella. I don’t know how many of my nine lives I used up then, but every day is precious now.”

For more on the leading jockey and the latest addition to his and Catherine’s family, the new issue of HELLO! is on sale now.