Michael Costa sits in his office in the desert sands of Dubai and hangs on every word when the greatest trainers in the world drop in for a chinwag.

The former Gold Coast trainer is still pinching himself that he is the private trainer in the United Arab Emirates for Sheikh Ahmed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum.

Costa has been there three years now after seizing the golden opportunity which arose from an out-of-the-blue phone call, which he initially thought must have been a prank.

• PUNT LIKE A PRO: Become a Racenet IQ member and get expert tips – with fully transparent return on investment statistics – from Racenet’s team of professional punters at our Pro Tips section. SUBSCRIBE NOW!

Better still, he’s recently signed a new contract to extend his stay training for the Sheikh, who owned former British champion and two-time Queen Elizabeth Stakes winner Addeybb.

Costa has recently been holidaying back in Queensland, with his wife Mel and four children, and Racenet caught up with him after the family visited Australia Zoo this week.

The 37-year-old has trained plenty of winners in Dubai and turned the Sheikh’s Dubai operation from a “wooden spoon stable” into the region’s premier racing organisation.

• Gollan reveals spring carnival team and target races

But Costa says he has cherished the quiet moments away from the racetrack, chewing the fat with some of world racing’s top figures, just as much as any of his wins.

“When it’s racing carnival time in Dubai, you see all of the top trainers in the world,” Costa tells Racenet.

“And some of them regularly come to visit, two or three times a year, and William Haggas is one of them.

“William will come to my stable and we will sit on the couch in my office for hours and just chat.

“When William chats to me, he is talking like he is the student and that is not the case at all because he’s one of the greatest trainers in the world.

“It’s terrific to see guys like him who are always learning and wanting to chat.

“It is completely different to when I kicked off in Australia, where everyone was hungry and trying to outdo each other.

“I thought I was going pretty good in Australia.

“But now I’ve been exposed to meeting the top nutritionists in the world, the top vets and the top trainers who will come and pop into Dubai and come in and sit in my stables and just talk for hours about horses.”

• Vandyke eyes first Victorian spring since Alligator Blood heroics

Costa’s Dubai gig is a far cry from when he was a young trainer trying to make his way in Sydney in the early days.

He often couldn’t scrape together enough money for house rent when he was trying to make it as a trainer in 2012/13 and for a while even slept in his Holden Barina.

Life is now very different.

“We have treated this as an adventure and it definitely now feels like home,” Costa said.

“I didn’t know too much about the UAE before we came here.

“It’s really good for our kids to grow up in Dubai as they go to amazing schools, they meet some amazing people.

“Their classmates’ parents are CEOs of companies like Microsoft.

“It’s quite amazing, they are in a bit of a bubble.

“For me as a trainer, the lifestyle is very good and we race five months of the year.

“Everyone who has moved overseas for work tells me that I will wake up one day and know the time is right to move back home.

“But that hasn’t happened yet.”

You get the sense that while Costa is happy in Dubai for the time being, the lure of a return to train in Australia could one day prove hard to resist.

However he has no current plans to train anywhere but Dubai, where he has Chris Waller’s ex-foreperson Jo Taylor as one of his trusted racing offsiders.

• Stewards remove conditions as police charge against Huxtable dismissed

After riding a fresh wave of success training winners in Dubai, Costa’s new goals are to travel some of the Sheikh’s horses internationally and win races around the globe including in Australia.

“Chatting to (wife) Mel, we have still got a lot we need to do in Dubai and things I personally want to achieve for His Highness,” Costa said.

“The first contract I signed here was a three-year contract and that has been completed now and I’ve just signed on again, there is no duration now I have just signed back on.

“We have now become a force to be reckoned with as a stable.

“The main focus moving forward is to be travelling horses internationally.

“We get roughly around 10-15 horses from His Highness’s UK trainers, they were initially maideners or horses which were not in form.

“But after the first couple of years when we had good success with these horses, His Highness has started this year to give us some higher-class horses.

“We had a really good horse come this year called Maljoom, who finished third in Romantic Warrior’s race on Dubai World Cup night.

“He’s a little bit of an older horse, but a horse like that could suit Australia for sure.”

Originally published as Michael Costa re-signs as private trainer for Sheikh Ahmed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum in Dubai