‘It’s not rocket science’ – How a chance Melbourne meeting with John Messara sparked Haggas’ Sydney raids

At one point, William Haggas was seriously considering a permanent base in Australia and with a strike-rate in Sydney to match any local trainer, it is little wonder. On the eve of the Englishman’s latest assault on the autumn riches, Haggas tells Matt Stewart he is ready to upset the Australian apple cart once again.

John Messara planted the seed that would lead to one of the most effective and somewhat sobering annual foreign raids on our racing riches.

To some Australian and New Zealanders players desperate to claim a slice of the Sydney autumn’s dazzling riches, polite, urbane former mid-level English cricketer William Haggas has been Haggas The Horrible.

To most, however, Haggas has set the bar, and a challenge.

In just a handful of raids over a handful of years, Haggas horses have plundered the Sydney autumn.

Haggas does not like campaigning horses in our spring because it represents the end of the European flat season. That said, last October’s $10 million Golden Eagle at Rosehill was too rich to ignore and Haggas aimed up and won it with Lake Forest. Haggas watched the race from Italy where he provided reporters with a cute line. “We love our little raids.”

Lake Forest was Haggas’s 10th winner from 18 Sydney starters over four years. They have won races with total prize money of over $25 million. It has been one of world racing’s master plays.

The Haggas experience has both enriched and embarrassed us and had it not been for a Melbourne Cup day sales pitch from Messara over a decade ago, Haggas, a true racing explorer, may have set sail elsewhere.

The latest assault begins at Rosehill on Saturday.

Dubai Honour has returned but it will be left to fellow Haggas traveller Al Mubhir to confront Via Sistina in the Ranvet Stakes.

It will be shades of two years ago when Dubai Honour, a good but not outstanding horse in Europe, beat Montefilia and Mo’unga in the Ranvet before clobbering Anamoe into third in the Queen Elizabeth Stakes at Randwick.

Dubai Honour’s stablemate Baaeed was Europe’s champion at the time. Asked on radio after the Queen Elizabeth to compare Dubai Honour to Baaeed, Haggas said: “There is no comparison. Baaeed is an eight lengths better horse.”

Dubai Honour delivered a clip to our stocks and our benchmarks. Ditto his stablemate Addeybb, another hardy but not absolutely top-class raider who provided great theatre with Verry Elleegant in 2021. She beat him in the Ranvet, he reversed the order in the Queen Elizabeth, winning it for the second time.

None of this would likely have happened had Haggas not first met leviathan Australians Rick Smith and Bruce Mathieson in Dubai in 2012, then Messara over lunch at Flemington on Melbourne Cup Day in 2013.

The Australians bought a Haggas horse called Beaten Up who would later win the 2013 Doomben Cup for Chris Waller. Beaten Up was running in the Sheema Classic where he ran sixth and Haggas was given an enthusiastic push for Australian racing and its riches by Beaten Up’s new owners.

Haggas had always had a strong radar for international jurisdictions but Smith and Mathieson – worth almost $2 billion collectively, incidentally – gave enough of a shove for Haggas to check things out. He scoped Melbourne, not Sydney.

“I went to Melbourne the following autumn – your spring – to do some ‘recon’ and have a look at the tracks: Werribee, Caulfield, Flemington, Moonee Valley,” Haggas said.

“On Cup Day Rick introduced me to Messara, who I half-knew through a friend, and he (Messara) was telling me about this thing called The Championships. There would be millions and millions and millions in prize money. Of course, it sparked my interest.”

The Championships burst on the scene in 2014, a reinvention of the Sydney autumn carnival. Randwick would host eight Group 1 across two Saturdays. The prize money would be $13 million. It has since doubled.

“I looked at it every year,” Haggas said. “It was such a cool idea and every time in Sydney in April it was pouring with rain, which I knew did not really suit Australian horses.”

Before Addeybb beat Verry Elleegant in the Queen Elizabeth, then Dubai Honour repeated the dose to Anamoe, Haggas had a strong inkling that Australian racing had an achilles heel. Every jurisdiction does. England’s sprinters lack depth, Japan’s horses mostly hate it wet.

In Australia there was lots of money in staying races but not many stayers.

“That’s why we keep coming,” Haggas said. “These are good horses but they are not top, top horses. They struggle in Group 1 back home. It’s not rocket science, albeit good Europeans have come to Australia and not delivered.

“Via Sistina – she had a couple of trainers in her youth and eventually won a Group 1 on soft ground in Ireland, as a five-year-old. She was a pretty good performer, at the Addeybb level. The thing is she had to have heavy ground in Europe but in Australia she’s smashing track records. She has obviously improved.

“A mare like Alcohol Free. A far better horse in Europe than Via Sistina but couldn’t go in Australia. Travel remains a very difficult thing. Some adapt better than others.”

True, but Haggas has near-perfected the formula and other than a trickle of Japanese, remains the only foreign trainer to fully leap all over Sydney’s stake-money bounty that is a complete contrast to the lean offerings in Europe. It is Haggas’ secret playground.

“The logic is pretty sound. The European horses, at that distance, are better than the Australian horses,” he said.

“The fly in the ointment was Lake Forest, who was a useful performer at sprint distances, stepped up a little in trip and won the Golden Eagle.

“For the most part, though, we’ve gone with our strengths and brought over mile-and-a-quarter, mile-and-a-half horses.”

Haggas says he’d be wasting his time targeting Australian sprints.

“I wouldn’t have a horse fast enough,” he said.

“The Australian sales pitch has always the been the Golden Slipper, not a race like the Queen Elizabeth. It works wonderfully well but we are aiming to have horses racing further afield at five and six.”

Newmarket-based Haggas reveres those brave enough to risk entering foreign territory. He has trained over 30 Group 1 winners, six of them in foreign countries.

He admires the Romantic Warrior odyssey so much that he wrote a congratulatory letter to his Hong Kong connections.

“Wow, they’re having a go aren’t they? I wrote a letter to the owner and trainer saying just how sporting they have been. They could have stayed home and won every race in Hong Kong. Good on them. As I said, travel is such a challenge yet when it works out it’s so rewarding,” he said.

For Haggas’ first Sydney quest, help came from the heavens.

It was in 2020 with Addeybb. The horse wasn’t a star but good enough. The ace up his sleeve was rain. Addeybb was a duck.

From Newmarket, Haggas kept a close eye on the Sydney weather that (Australian) summer.

“Sydney was in a huge drought through December and January. There were pictures of lots and lots of mice, millions of them, running through barren farms,” he said. “Bushfires were raging everywhere.

“I thought to myself ‘when this breaks, it is going to pour down’. It’s cyclical.”

The Haggas forecast was right. Addeybb got a soft track in the Ranvet and a heavy surface at Randwick for the Queen Elizabeth and won both.

“It was a huge thing. It was during COVID. The staff had to do two weeks bailed up in a hotel room. It wasn’t a picnic,” Haggas said.

A year later Addeybb, the mud-runner, was beaten on a soft track by Verry Elleegant in the Ranvet, then reversed the order on good ground at Randwick.

This latest raid hasn’t all been smooth sailing.

Desert Hero travelled poorly and his campaign is up in the air.

Haggas won’t make the trip – “we are getting very serious in pre-training now for our summer” – but the world clock is friendly and the master trainer can watch Rosehill on Saturday, then Randwick for The Championships, during morning tea.

Haggas adds Golden Eagle to remarkable Australian run

William Haggas took his extraordinary record to 10 wins from 22 starters in Australia with his four-year-old Lake Forest causing an upset win in a rough-and-tumble Golden Eagle at Rosehill.

The StraightBren O’Brien

Haggas is not predicting Al Mubhir will be his latest giant slayer but “I’m interested to see what happens there …”

Dubai Honour will skip the Ranvet for the Tancred, while Al Mubhir is rightly being kept safe as a possible threat to Via Sistina, our adopted champion, will be a raging favourite.

“He’s a Frankel horse, Group 3 class. He loves right-handed, never as good left. On European form he’s not far behind Via Sistina. He relished 10 furlongs at Sandown. It might be interesting,” Haggas said of Al Mubhir.

The Newmarket-based trainer once considered establishing a permanent satellite yard in NSW.

“The logic is pretty sound. The European horses, at that (middle) distance, are better than the Australian horses” – William Haggas on the right type of horse for the Sydney autumn

He and a partner had their eye on Paul Fudge’s lavish property in the NSW Southern Highlands.

“Then COVID hit. Ciaron Maher ended up there. After COVID I got a bit older and less enthusiastic,” he said.

“The way we’ve been doing it seems to be working OK.”