Haworth winding down long career
was don’t you. I told him I didn’t know who it was. He said ‘you’re joking ’.”
“I used to get on very well with Lady Di,” he said.
But the horse that changed his fortunes in the early days when he was sailing close to the wind was Palace Wolf, a bargain buy who went on to become a top jumper.
So much so, Haworth called his racing stables Palace Lodge.
Records show Haworth has trained 482 winners in New Zealand. The most successful was dual Group 1 winner Mac O’Reilly, while horses like Rosina Lad, Jury’s Out, Wigan Prince and The Foreman weren’t too far behind.
Rosina Lad gave Haworth the distinction of training a Gr.1 quinella when he pipped Jury’s Out in the Captain Cook Stakes at Hastings in 2006.
He had great success with the stock of Faltaat, too. Of them all, Jury’s Out was his favourite.
“He was an incredible horse. He suffered through so many injuries . . . crook feet . . . but he kept bouncing back,” he said.
For many seasons Howarth trained in partnership with Matt Dixon. His best season was in 2010-11 when he trained 50 winners, while in 2008-09 the stable produced 45 winners and broke the $1 million stakemoney mark for that year.
But while he was now changing tack, he would still renew his trainer’s licence each season to have the option of taking a horse to the races again one day if the right one came along.
He knew from experience the value of pre-training and rehabilitation
I used to get on very well with Lady Di. David Haworth
centres for a horse and trainer.
“It’s a good formula and gives a horse the best opportunity to get back to being an athlete again,” he said.
His stables were often used as a horse motel by trainers like Shaun Ritchie, Allan Sharrock and Tony Pike if they were campaigning a horse for a big race in the lower North Island.
Haworth was also a past president of the New Zealand Trainers Association and served time on the committee of the Levin Racing Club.