How’s that for a CLASSY HORSE
Cricket prodigy Haggas hoping star performer Sea Of Class will hit rivals for six in the Arc
WILLIAM HAGGAS has a unique way of describing his illustrious 10-time champion trainer colleague Sir Michael Stoute: ‘The man who ruined my cricket career.’
It harks back to the day Haggas, who saddles second favourite Sea Of Class in today’s €5million Qatar Prix de L’Arc de Triomphe and was back then an aspiring assistant trainer, got a game for the Yorkshire 2nd XI against an Indian XI at Headingley.
‘The coaches for the team were Doug Padgett and Tony Nicholson. They were racing men and knew I was from Newmarket so asked if I had a tip,’ said Haggas.
‘So I rang Stoute — I was going out with his nanny — and said “Can you give me a winner?” He gave me a tip and it got stuffed.
‘I opened the batting, got about 25, and I’ve always said to Stoute, “You ruined my career’’. If it had won, I would have been in the first team!’
Tongue in cheek no doubt but Haggas was a dab hand with the bat. Good enough to score 87 not out when captaining Harrow against Eton at Lord’s.
He was nowhere near as good, he acknowledges, as James Whitaker, his friend growing up in North Yorkshire who went on to play for England and captain Leicestershire to the County Championship in 1996, the year Haggas won the Derby at Epsom with Shaamit.
Haggas has still excelled at the highest level on the turf, just not over 22 manicured yards of it.
And missing out on the chance to open the batting for the white rose county will feel even less than a missed opportunity if Sea Of Class can land him Europe’s biggest race at Longchamp, the contest won by Stoute with Workforce in 2010.
Four wins from five runs, including victories in the Irish and Yorkshire Oaks, means Sea Of Class will start second favourite to John Gosden’s brilliant 2017 Arc winner Enable. The two Newmarket contenders look head and shoulders above their rivals. Sea Of Class is certainly made for the job. Her sire Sea The Stars and grandmother Urban Sea both won the Arc, in 2009 and 1993 respectively. If Sea Of Class, who did not make her debut until April, was impressive in the Irish Oaks, she took the breath away in the Yorkshire Oaks. Jockey James Doyle was a rocket-propelled passenger and Haggas has to look back to another of his special days for a comparison. He said :‘ I was impressed. You had to be. Have I had anything like it before?
‘ Shaamit’s turn of foot in the Derby from the three- furlong marker, bounding from centre to the front in a very short space of time, was very impressive.’
Shaamit was Haggas’s one and only previous Arc runner. He was injured when finishing seventh to Helissio in 1996.
What happened in the aftermath of Shaamit’s Epsom success may also be evidence that it is not simply Haggas’s Yorkshire roots which explain a default demeanour and why his feet are firmly on the ground.
The Epsom springboard effect was non-existent when the Haggas horses were sick and the following season yielded only 12 wins. Haggas said: ‘I don’t care how brilliant you are, if your horses are wrong you are stuffed. All the good work we had done was undone.
‘It was terrible but I had let Maureen in by then. When I started it was me, me, me. Maureen was great and wanted t o be more involved but I was stubborn and would not let her in much. It was only when I got her involved that we started going better.’ Maureen is the eldest daughter of nine-time Derby-winning jockey Lester Piggott. By Haggas’s admission, the l e gendary r i der was not too impressed when his daughter took up with the aspiring trainer.
But the couple’s complimentary skills are now one of the reasons why their stable has turned into one of the most powerful in the country.
Haggas concedes his wife was a rock of support during the tough times. ‘There were times when it was desperate. I don’t think we ever came close to quitting but you worry,’ he said.
Haggas has taken Sea Of Class’s potentially problematical wide draw in stall 15 in his phlegmatic stride. He said: ‘My job is to get her there. James knows what to do. He is riding with a lot of confidence.’