RAB HAVLIN has already clocked up 30 years in racing but hopes that the best years may be yet to come.
He rides GM Hopkins for John Gosden in the Betway Lincoln at Doncaster this afternoon, a big-race chance which is due reward for time spent labouring at the sport's coalface.
Having started as an 11-year-old from Saltcoats working weekends at Cree Lodge, the yard across the road from Ayr racecourse, first for John Wilson and later Linda Perratt, Havlin moved to Manton in Wiltshire to be apprenticed to Peter Chapple-Hyam.
"I was 18 when I went there when we had top horses like Dr Devious, Rodrigo de Triano and Spectrum. I sat on most of them and, when Peter left Manton to go to Hong Kong, John came. I had a chat with him and this is my 15th season with him," Havlin said, adding with a brief raise of the eyebrows: "We've had our ups and downs. He's been a great mentor to me. I was a bit of a wild child when I was younger - wanting to party a bit too much. He would sit me down in the office and tell if I wanted to carry on riding in sellers and claimers for the rest of my life to just keep carrying on the road you're on."
Having taken a detour to embrace family life, the road Havlin now travels is that of a hard-working jockey who has carved out a career at some of the less fashionable venues and abroad - winning the 2012 Italian Derby - as well as being part of the backroom team at Gosden's Newmarket yard, playing a key role in the preparation of horses like Kingman.
However, when stable jockey William Buick switched from Gosden to Godolphin for this season, Havlin was not knocking on the trainer's office door. As he reasoned his position: "I'd like to have the top job but you need to be a high-profile jockey to carry off the defeats. People would blame me but not William or Frankie Dettori. I'm there when the boss needs me and if, come the big races, he feels he needs to put someone else on that doesn't faze me at all.
"You're happy to be part of the team and you're repaid by riding winners elsewhere - that's where you get your reward."
Payday could come with GM Hopkins in the Lincoln, a race which is often won by a young horse on the upgrade. "He's a nice horse and his profile fits the race," Havlin said. "He's rated 99 and had seven runs coming into his four-year-old career. And, when he won the Silver Cambridgeshire last year, a lot of people were marking him up as potential Group Three horse.
"He had a couple of flops after that but they were on bad ground and he's a horse that can't cope with really soft, loose ground.
"He won first time out last year, he's a good traveller in his races and, hopefully, he's bridged that 9lb gap they put him up for winning. They'll go a nice, solid pace so you can let him find his feet and then we can get a nice tow into the race."
Havlin just hopes that the best of this horse is yet to come.
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