Frankie Dettori’s long-term understudy, who landed his first G1 success in 2022 on top two-year-old filly Commissioning, speaks to Steve Dennis
GB: He doesn’t mind what people call him. Sometimes they call him a team player, which he undoubtedly is. Sometimes it’s ‘cog in the wheel’, or ‘backroom boy’, or ‘unsung hero’. Robert Havlin grins; he’s not bothered. “I just get on with the job,” he says.
Havlin works for trainer John Gosden, has done for 23 years, has become an invaluable member of the team – that’s something else people call him – as understudy to Frankie Dettori, a second fiddle whose virtuoso performances habitually take place away from the spotlight, on the Newmarket gallops in the mornings, at second-tier racecourses in the afternoons.
The horses he’s ridden at home and in public are household names – Enable, Cracksman, Palace Pier, Golden Horn, Kingman – but he’s never been in the saddle on the big days. Understudies don’t get that luxury; Havlin knows that, doesn’t mind that either.
Havlin is 49 and has been riding for 31 years, has ridden more than 1,200 winners, but before October had never won a G1 race. It’s every understudy’s dream – the prima ballerina stubs her toe, the lead soprano has a sore throat, the star actor is indisposed, and the big chance presents itself. Dettori was suspended, so Havlin rode Commissioning in the G1 Fillies’ Mile at Newmarket, and he took his big chance in style, his name in lights at last.
Pure relief
“Relief,” he says when asked what it felt like to cross the line in front, his soft Scottish accent full of well-remembered pleasure. “Pure relief. I’d been second a few times in Group 1s but this got the monkey off my back.
“As you get older you realise how hard it is to win these big races. I tried to treat it as a normal day, I was busy riding out all morning, and I know odds-on favourites can get beat. I’m sure I appreciated it more at my age than I would have done if I was younger.”
Everyone else appreciated it too. His fellow jockeys came out of the weighing room to applaud as he returned to unsaddle, a tribute afforded to very few, and the crowd gave Havlin an ovation he won’t forget.
“I was surprised,” he says. “Winning a Group 1 meant a lot to me but I didn’t realise that it meant a lot to other people too. I was quite humbled by it. It was [owner] Sheikh Isa’s first Group 1 winner too, so that made it even better.
“Frankie needs to get banned more often! I imagine he’ll be back on the filly next year. I had my day in the sun, I’m a glass half-full sort of guy and it was a real privilege to win a big race on her.”
It’s an occupational hazard for the understudy, the team player, the backroom boy, that any association with the best horses is fleeting. They do the groundwork, the hard work, and then hand over to someone else to grab all the glory. It wouldn’t be for everybody, the frustrations of such a role explicit, but Havlin revels in it. He is no lone wolf, preferring instead to be part of something bigger, to serve in his own little piece of heaven.
A creature of habit
“Sure, it’s crossed my mind before, when I was younger, that maybe I could be the main jockey for someone else,” he admits. “But I’m a creature of habit, I don’t like moving around. Loyalty is important to me – I show loyalty, I’m shown loyalty in return.
“I’m part of a great team here, it’s all about getting the best results for the yard, and that’s the way I’ve always felt about the job. I’ll stay here until I’m done.”
But is it not frustrating to watch Frankie win on horses he has prepared? “No,” he asserts. “I don’t think that way. If you did, your head would be fried. There’s no animosity whatsoever. It’s a privilege to sit on these good horses, and then I hand them over to him. That’s my job.
“It’s not that I’m not ambitious, it’s just the reality of it. Look, three-quarters of the guys in the weighing room would give their right arm to have my job. I’m very happy with what I’ve got.”
After all, Havlin’s ridden more Classic winners than most, just not in Classics. He rode the majestic Enable to win in maiden company, as he did with Irish Derby winner Jack Hobbs, St Leger winner Arctic Cosmos and multiple G1 winner Cracksman, and has also won on high-class runners such as Palace Pier, Lord North and The Fugue. However, it’s a horse he never rode in public that sits at the top of his personal list.
“Kingman, possibly because I rode him every morning,” says Havlin, recalling the Irish 2,000 Guineas winner who was Europe’s champion three-year-old in 2014.
“He had an explosive turn of foot. In his early days he used to quicken on the gallops, then prick his ears and ease off. Then he was runner-up in the 2,000 Guineas, his first defeat.
“Later, when I rode him before the Irish Guineas, I pulled him out and he just surged nine, ten lengths clear, quickening all the time. It was a real ‘Oh my God!’ moment.
“That defeat had woken him up; he was a different horse. Before that, he’d found everything too easy, never under pressure. You often find that with very good horses – they don’t learn much from their first couple of races because it all comes too easy for them. The middle-of-the-road horses learn a lot quicker because they find things harder.
“Before he won the Dante, I rode work on Golden Horn that was so good it left me with butterflies in my stomach. Frankie rode Jack Hobbs in the Dante and I told him he was on the wrong one. They’re all different; Cracksman was never flashy in the mornings.”
It was the prospect of riding this sort of horse that fuelled Havlin’s boyhood dreams, pushed him to work precious Saturday mornings at John Wilson’s yard near his home in Ayr. He spent a couple of years with Wilson after leaving school, then moved south to join Peter Chapple-Hyam at the fabled Manton training estate, where he thrived on the close-knit, larky family atmosphere.
‘You can’t be a party animal’
“I was a typical lad, pubs, nightclubs, late nights, but I was always at work on time in the mornings,” he recalls. “It took me a while to settle down – my mother called me Peter Pan, she said I’d never grow up – but as you get older you can’t be a party animal and do the job properly.
“It was a good place to grow up. Everyone lived on the grounds, it was like a big family, we had a lot of good laughs there and I’m still great friends with Peter.”
That sort of inclusive environment brings out the best in Havlin, and although it probably got a little more sedate and serious when John Gosden took over the helm at Manton in 1999, he was old enough by then to appreciate the change in focus. Gosden left for Newmarket seven years later and Havlin followed him, unwilling to give up something he felt such a part of, that was also an integral part of him.
It was that team spirit and family ambience that helped Havlin at his lowest point, when he was suspended for six months by France Galop in 2017 after testing positive for a cocktail of drugs – including cocaine and morphine – that he had never ingested. He fought the case, factually and financially, but to no avail.
“That was a dark time,” he recalls. “I spent fortunes taking France Galop to court – I was on the phone every day to lawyers. I went to the lab that France Galop had used, did a ‘hair test’, and the results were way below the required threshold. I was told, in so many words, those substances couldn’t have been actively consumed by me.
‘The whole thing made me stronger’
“I had to do all that, otherwise I wouldn’t have been able to look my kids [daughters India and Lucia] in the eye. The boss and [Gosden’s wife] Rachel were great. I never took any time off and I went racing, saddling horses for a change, looking at the game from a different angle. The whole thing made me stronger, really. The following year I rode 127 winners, my best ever.”
Havlin has ridden only half that number this year, but the golden glory of Commissioning was worth much more to him than the single win it added to his total. Gosden and Dettori knew what it meant to him, because it meant as much to them.
“Nobody deserves this more,” said Gosden, and Dettori agreed. “He puts in so much hard work,” he said. “All the best horses I’ve ridden in my life he has prepared for me, and he has finally got his rewards, which is amazing.”
Next year, Dettori – embarking on his final year in the saddle – will likely be back on the unbeaten Commissioning, who Havlin regards as a middle-distance filly eminently suitable for the Prix de Diane. Havlin will resume his role as understudy, ready to step forward whenever he’s needed. He'll do the same for whoever steps into Dettori's shoes in 2024, a constant point in a changing landscape.
“I’m not ready to retire yet,” he says, his 50th birthday coming down the line. “I’d love to ride another Group 1 winner, and you never know what might happen. I feel as good as ever, and I’ll just keep on doing the best I can do for the boss and the yard, more of the same.”
Spoken like a true team player, like the perfect backroom boy, cog in the wheel, unsung hero. People call Havlin all those things; now they can call him a Group 1 winner too.
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