Keeping up with Annabel – The ambition driving Australia’s biggest training partnership

Annabel Neasham’s training career took off like a rocket, but the addition of partner Rob Archibald’s name on the stable’s door at the start of this season has allowed another burst of growth. Young and ambitious, the pair told Matt Stewart they have no plans to slow down.

Twice, Rob Archibald has tried to keep pace with Annabel Neasham.

The first time he failed dismally. The second, much better.

Neasham wasn’t even in sight when both contested the 2018 Mongol Derby.

Run over the wild steppes of Mongolia and tracing travel routes used by Genghis Khan, the world’s longest horse race is scheduled for 10 days. Neasham and Adrian Corboy, Ciaron Maher’s horse breaker, won it in six.

Archibald was working for Coolmore in the UK and flew in with his two brothers and a cousin. The hapless lads finished seventh, a day behind Neasham and Corboy.

“I didn’t just finish ahead of him, I finished a day ahead of him,” Neasham chuckles at one of their great shared memories.

Archibald, who is in the car with Neasham for this interview, added: “Yeah I cop it all the time …”

The second time Archibald was required to keep up with Neasham, by then his partner, was mid-way through 2022. It was a ravaged post-COVID world and horse trainers were among the sufferers.

Finding good staff was near-impossible. “It got to the stage where you’d nearly take someone off the street,” Neasham said.

Despite the post-pandemic years, racing, the only game in town, flourished. Neasham’s star skyrocketed.

No trainer had got so big, so successful, so quickly.

In August 2020, Neasham gathered her licence after a stint in Melbourne, then Sydney, with Ciaron Maher and began training three horses from a 10-horse barn at Warwick Farm. She was 29.

Within three years she’d trained eight Group 1 winners, the same as Gai Waterhouse at the same stage of her career. Neasham had 164 runners in that Zaaki and Mo’unga-fuelled first season and leapt to 1051 in her third.

The challenge was being able to keep pace with herself: that the horses and the business galloped side by side.

This is what Archibald walked into in mid-2022. By then, he and Neasham were an item. In Mongolia, they had been acquaintances who’d worked together for Gai Waterhouse.

Neasham welcomed Archibald through the stable gate and into her breakneck world; one that required some parameters.

“Like everywhere else, we were so short-staffed. The stable had obviously grown quickly and (the business side) hadn’t quite caught up. We were chasing our tail a little bit,” Archibald said.

“We were getting good systems in place, help Annabel implement them. As you get bigger you need greater efficiencies to run smoothly. The dynamic is changing all the time.”

Good trainers have been wrecked by bad efficiencies or at least the inability to juggle horses and business.

Archibald knew that his life and business partner, a one-time promising musician, former champion equestrian, one-time desk-bound recruitment officer and marathon race winner, had the smarts to bring it all together.

Neasham, however, is quick to credit Archibald: “I couldn’t do this without Rob, there’s just no way. We have two sets of eyes, two different opinions and we don’t argue. We both have our strengths and weaknesses.”

Archibald says Neasham is “fundamentally just a hard worker”.

“She relates well to staff. She leads by example. She would never ask anyone to do something she would not do. She’s hard but fair, a really great leader,” he said.

The first two staffers Neasham employed, Kyle “Stretch” Ryan and Joel Butler are still there. Tommy Berry’s father John, also among the original crew, recently retired. Stretch now runs the Pakenham stable.

“We often refer to those early days. You do have a special relationship with the ones who have been here right from the start,” Neasham said. “Stretch wants to be a trainer one day. I couldn’t be happier for him or prouder of him.”

Neasham and Archibald now employ about 70 staff, a mix of casuals and full-timers, including an office manager and someone to run HR.

The stable that did not exist five years ago is among the giants: 120 at Warwick Farm, 34 at Scone, 20 at Pakenham and 20 in Brisbane; third to Chris Waller and Maher for wins this season, with 158. The stable’s Group 1 tally is now 12.

The “two eyes” model has sparked a further surge. The stable is on track to easily eclipse the 184 winners it had under Neasham’s name last season, with 159 in the bank already.  

Last season the stable had 99 winners in NSW, a figure already surpassed with over four months left in the current season. Depth has played its part with 87 of the 107 NSW winners non-metro.

The stable bought 22 yearlings at the Magic Millions sale at the Gold Coast and six at Karaka. Neasham, a yearling sale darling, will come away with a handful of the most sought-after Lots at the Inglis Australian Easter Yearling Sale.

The army is building as the Sydney peak season draws near. Amelia’s Jewel contests, Saturday’s Coolmore Classic at Rosehill. Bois D’Argent runs in the Peter Young at Caulfield. Fawkner Park is being aimed at the Ranvet, Sunshine In Paris may bob up in the William Reid.

That’s just the top tier.

But Neasham does not feel like she’s on top of her own rocket.

“I know from the outside it probably feels that it’s all happened so quickly but from the inside it has felt very organic, certainly not manic,” she said.

“Rob and I are pretty active with recruitment. People in the office do all the emails and the paperwork but riders, people in management roles, key ground staff… we like to be involved in their selection because at the end of the day we have to work with them.

“We try to hand pick as much as possible, make sure we provide a good environment and a good employment package. We pay well.

“We got two people off the Darley Flying Start this year. Every time we hear someone is good and asks for a job, we grab them. Backpackers, if they have the right credentials, we grab them. We take on staff with no experience but who are enthusiastic. I think we’ve got to the stage now where we can educate staff.”

Against the traditional tide, Neasham and Archibald plan to reduce Warwick Farm and increase numbers at Scone.

“Rob and I are both country people at heart,” Neasham said.

“I had an office job for 10 months and hated it (in recruitment in London) and Rob has never had an office job in his life. We are outdoorsy-people and can see ourselves spending a lot more time at Scone, as we get older.

“There’s a new Poly track going in, the grass is fantastic, the air is cleaner.

“It’s expensive to have a horse trained in Sydney. We see this as providing the same service but making it more affordable for the owner. You have to react to people’s spending and times are tight.”

Neasham is 34, Archibald 40.

They holidayed in Greece in late June two years ago and have marked the same spot on the calendar this year for a riding safari in Kenya.

“I know from the outside it probably feels that it’s all happened so quickly but from the inside it has felt very organic, certainly not manic” – Annabel Neasham on the meteoric rise of her training career

For now, a mini-break after the Brisbane winter and before the spring trials is good enough.

“This time of year is really exciting and I’m not really thinking about my next holiday. We’ve been to Perth a couple of times (to race), up and down the highway a few times and the Magic Millions is sort of a working holiday,” Neasham said.

“I once stared out the window for 10 months in an office job I hated so I’m not complaining about the life I have now.

“I never set out to be the biggest trainer in Australia. I just set out to win as many Group 1 races as I could.

“Some days, you’re flying to Melbourne or Brisbane, and it’s just so busy and you think how nice it would be to have a boutique stable of 20 or 30 Group 1 horses.”

She says in order to get four or five good horses, to get Amelia’s Jewel, Fawkner Park, Sunshine In Paris and Lady Laguna, you have to start with a lot more.

“Maybe, one day when we get our brand to a certain point, we might be able to wind back a bit and get support from some good breeders,” she said.

“But that’s a fair way off. We are young, Rob and I are ambitious, and to be honest we’re having too much fun.”