Born in Skipton, North Yorkshire on August 23, 1960, William Haggas is the son-in-law of the late Lester Piggott, having married Maureen, the elder daughter of the 11-time champion jockey, in 1989. Having previous worked for John Winter and Sir Mark Prescott, Haggas took out a training licence in his own right in late 1986 and sent out his first winner, the two-year-old Tricky Note, over five furlongs on the Rowley Mile at Newmarket, on April 15, 1987.
Haggas has remained at Somerville Lodge Stables on the Fordham Road in Newmarket ever since, whence he has sent out 35 Group 1 winners worldwide, including two British Classic winners, Shaamit, ridden by Michael Hills, in the Derby at Epsom in 1996 and Dancing Rain, ridden by Johnny Murtagh, in the Oaks, over the same course and distance, in 2011. Dancing Rain was subsequently beaten in the Irish Oaks at the Curragh, but went on to win both the Group 1 Henkel-Preis Der Diana at Dusseldorf and the Group 2 British Champions Fillies’ And Mares’ Stakes at Ascot later in her three-year-old campaign.
On British soil, Haggas enjoyed his most successful season, numerically, in 2025, when he saddled 176 winners. His biggest win that year came courtesy of Dubai Honour, ridden by Tom Marquand, in the Group 1 Tancred Stakes at Rosehill in Sydney, New South Wales, which yielded £430,593 in prize money. Nevertheless, his domestic haul came from 731 runners, at a strike rate of 24%, and yielded £4.23 million in prize money, the third-highest total of his training career.
The best horse that Haggas has trained was the Sea The Stars colt Baaeed, who was awarded a Timeform Rating of 137 after winning the Juddmonte International Stakes at York by six-and-a-half lengths, as a four-year-old, on August 17, 2022. At that stage, Baaeed was the highest-rated horse in Europe since Frankel achieved a rating of 147 in the Queen Anne Stakes at Royal Ascot on June 19, 2012. Unlike Frankel, Baaeed lost his unbeaten record when only fourth, beaten a length and three-quarters, in the Champion Stakes at Ascot on October 15, 2022, his final start, despite being sent off at prohibitive odds of 1/4.
