SUCCESS IS IN THE GENES FOR SAM

Nick Townsend talks to Sam Haggas, who is making his own name in the world of bloodstock

- Nick Townsend

He possesses most people's idea of an impeccable racing pedigree. Sire and dam: the training grandees William and Maureen Haggas. Grandsire: 11 times champion jockey Lester Piggott. From the moment of his birth Sam Haggas's destiny was laid out for him. A life in racing was almost an inevitability. As he reflects: "I've just grown up with it all my life, with horses quite literally out the back door."

And though he has fully grasped the opportunity, this 30-year-old has never strived for a career under the spotlight accorded a celebrated trainer like his father or legend of the saddle like his grandfather, but in the integral, though often forgotten, role of a bloodstock agent.

In just over four years, since establishing his own bloodstock agency in Newmarket, and his endeavours for Godolphin and Avenue Bloodstock before that, Haggas has already demonstrated his acumen as an astute assessor of horses in training, and their capacity for improvement.

It is a decidedly rarified world he inhabits; one in which he spends countless hours behind a computer screen studiously evaluating pedigrees and viewing race videos before his arrival at Tattersalls in Newmarket where we talk during the July Sales.

Away from the capacious sale ring and the auctioneers' barking exhortations demanding that would-be buyers assess the quality of the models on this equine catwalk the 30-year-old discusses his own swift progress and, just as pertinently, his flourishing business relationship with the Classic-winning Newmarket trainer George Boughey - a man very much in the ascendant since launching his own career four years ago at the age of 27.