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Widdup’s winning ways
Brad Widdup is regarded by many in the Australian Racing Industry as having the best cv in racing to become a trainer.
After 30 years of supporting racings honour role of trainers. Including BJ Smith, Liam Birchley & Bill Mitchell, Graeme Rogerson, Kevin Moses, Peter Snowden and John O’Shea under Godolphin. Brad obtained his trainers licence in early 2017 and trained his first starter to win. He built on that by exceeding 100 winners in the first two years.
Brad Widdup has established himself as one of the leading trainers in Sydney last season and has the stats to back it up. Widdup finishing 10th in the NSW Premiership with 63 winners and $4.133 million prizemoney, 15th in the Sydney Metropolitan Premiership and 4th in the NSW Provincial Premiership with stable stars Icebath (Winner $2 million The Invitation, placed in G1’s Cantala Stakes, The Doncaster, and Queen of the Turf) and Vulpine (Starlight Stakes-LR and Ortensia Stakes-LR) leading the charge.
Brad’s exceptional horsemanship is paramount and is proven in his results. His horses are athletes and live an unprecedented life in boutique stables at Hawkesbury where they have access to state-of-the-art facilities.
To those that follow racing, the rise of Brad Widdup up the Sydney training ladder come as no surprise. In just five years since being given a license to train in his own name, Widdup has trained over 200 winners and his horses have earned in excess of $9 million for their owners.
Consistency is a recurring adjective and one which is relevant, all the more so considering Widdup is immersed in what is arguably the most competitive training environment in Australia.
A native of Albury, Widdup had turned 17 and, by his own admission, was not entirely sold on making racing his career. Widdup’s family was into racing with his brother being an apprentice hoop riding work for Jack and Bob Ingham before becoming too heavy.
“I’d finished Year 11 and it was a bit hard to get a trade and I wasn’t sure what I was going to do but I’d been around horses my entire life,” Widdup said. “I never had lofty ambitions to be a horse trainer because I grew up around the industry and saw how hard it was.”
Widdup began working for trainer Rod Craig who sent him to Sydney with a horse called Gold Archer for a two-year-old race. The bright lights of Sydney weaved its magic.
“I went up with that horse for a couple of weeks and I never went back,” Widdup said. “I enjoyed living and working in Sydney.
“I came up to Warwick Farm and saw Clarry Conners with Tierce and Burst who had just won Golden Slippers and I’d never seen an establishment like Crown Lodge.”
“In the country, you might see one really good horse and I think the buzz of the city got me. If I stayed in Albury, I wouldn’t have been a horse trainer.”
Craig then asked Widdup to be his stable foreman as a 21-year-old and a chestnut colt called Intergaze gave him an early taste of what it is like to train not just a good horse, a really good horse with Widdup in charge the day Intergaze upset Octagonal in his farewell race, the 1997 Queen Elizabeth Stakes.
“Rod Craig offered me the foreman’s job with him and that was the making of me staying in the industry,” Widdup said. “Intergaze was an incredible horse. He was fantastic to work with and backed it up with his ability.
Widdup then found himself working for the Ingham Brothers at Crown Lodge where he stayed for nine years working under Peter Snowden and John O’Shea.
“When I first saw it, I thought it was a bunch of factories to tell you the truth,” he said. “My brother said ‘when you drive to Warwick Farm, you’ll see Crown Lodge’ and I just thought I’d see stables then I told him I just saw some factories and he said ‘that’s Crown Lodge’.”
Widdup had been at Randwick with Kevin Moses for four seasons before going to Crown Lodge and he wouldn’t have been with the massive operation but for a rule change.
“Kevin always said we’d go into partnership but the role at Godolphin started in February and I spoke to the stewards about it when they were doing partnerships and they said they wouldn’t have a meeting about that until August,” Widdup said.
“I couldn’t knock back the job at Crown Lodge. It was a no-brainer and it was an incredible time and I’ve been very lucky. I went for the interview thinking ‘I’ll just give this a go’. You pick up a lot over the years if you’re willing to listen and I’ve worked for a lot of great trainers.”
Widdup finally became a trainer in his own right four seasons ago and it was not an easy transition as he started a new chapter at Hawkesbury.
“It’s been a long road to training,” he said. “I did a long apprenticeship.”
“I went from looking after 100 horses a day to one so I was walking the box a bit,” Widdup said. “A few weeks later, there was seven more horses in the stable but I did start to panic because the phone never rang. No clients and no press.
“I had a good resume but it doesn’t mean anything when you’re out on your own because you need to get results quick so it was good to see Junglized win.”
Junglized was Widdup’s first starter as a trainer and he won and, in his first full season he saddled up a further 50 winners, then 41 in season two and things were going along well. But when he lost his biggest owner, things got very hard again in 2019.
“I lost a lot of horses and had to rebuild,” Widdup said.
For a while, Widdup was wondering where his next winner would come from and his next batch of horses. And he was growing increasingly frustrated because, while he didn’t want to set any records, he also didn’t plan on being a trainer who had only a dozen horses.
In 2019 a filly named Akari came along, winning at Wyong before winning back-to-back stakes races at Randwick on Everest Day and Flemington on Melbourne Cup Day and since then Widdup has sent out horses like Icebath, a winner of $4.25m and who starts another campaign this spring.
Widdup’s talents were again on show towards the end of last season winning consecutive races with the eight-year-old mare Icecrusher and finishing the season with 17 metropolitan winners and $2.85m in stakes from 138 runners - a winning strike rate of better than 12 percent.
He is quick to point to the stable feeding Synergy as one of the reasons behind his success. “The thing about Synergy is its consistency - it’s always the same, the horses love it and that gives me the confidence I need.
“It’s a quality feed, it’s consistent and it works and that’s all I ask. I’ve learnt that you have to feed quality and that’s what I try and do.”