Group One-winning trainer Geoff Haigh isn’t in any rush with his progressive four-year-old High Quality.

“I’ll just take him through his classes quietly and as he matures he’ll hopefully step up and make it in the top grade,” the Levin-based horseman said.

“He’s game and he really tries hard so he’s going the right way.”

The son of Handsome Ransom won two trials last season before he finished runner-up on debut and then went one better at Awapuni.

He was then turned out and this term he has won at Trentham and replicated that mile success at Otaki last month.

“He could go there again on Saturday week and step up to 2100 metres, he’s looking like he wants to go a bit further now,” Haigh said. “In the whole family nothing has won over the shorter distances.”
The leading staying light in the pedigree is Doriemus, the multiple Group One winner of the Melbourne and Caulfield Cups and the Queen Elizabeth Stakes.

While High Quality has yet to race on anything other than heavy and slow ground, on which he has three wins and two placings from six starts, Haigh doesn’t believe the gelding to be a one trick pony.
“He’s had a couple of trials on the firmer tracks and they didn’t seem to worry him at all,” he said. “As he gets older I’m sure he’ll cope.”

Haigh has contented himself with a small team since the heady Group One days with his top mare Candide.

She bagged wins in the New Zealand 1000 Guineas and the New Zealand Oaks and also ran third in the AJC Oaks and Caulfield Stakes and fourths in the New Zealand Derby, AJC Derby and Caulfield Cup.