Colin Hayes: Champion Horse Racing Trainer

“If a horse becomes more beautiful in the course of his work, it is a sign that the training principles are correct.” Colonel Podhajsky. This quote is apt for champion trainer of thoroughbred racehorses, Colin Sidney Hayes (AM) (OBE), who has the credit of training 5,333 winners. Hayes obviously imparted the right training principles to bring home 28 Adelaide and 13 Melbourne Trainers’ Premierships.

In 1924, born in Sempaphore, South Australia, the passing away of his father when he was 10 years old, forced him to take up early employment becoming a boilermaker for the South Australian Electicity Trust. However, his keen interest in horse racing made him cough up £9 to purchase a steeplechaser named Surefoot, who Hayes’s rode as an amateur. One wonders if he gave it out as a good horse racing tip. Although his best placement was a third spot in the 1948 Great Eastern Steeplechase run at Oakbank, little did he know that it would spark the beginning of a long and glorious career as a trainer of thoroughbred horses and a long list of trophies including two Melbourne Cups in 1980 and 1986.

Colin Hayes was prompted by Surefoot to put his best foot forward and enlarge his business as a trainer, with the introduction of ‘Surefoot Lodge’, his first stable at Semaphore. Although this brought him his first trainer’s premiership in 1956, Hayes had bigger ambitions to breed winners and set up another stable 80 kilometers north-east of Adelaide, in Barossa Valley. His critics thought it to be a wrong move and considered the stable to be too far from the city area. However, the determined trainer formed a syndicate that purchased an 800-hectare property known as Lindsay Park. The land was conducive to raising horses with a very rich pasture and paddocks that were some of the best in the country. The property at Lindsay Park incorporated a 38 room manor made from marble and sandstone quarried from this property and built in 1840.

Colin Hayes’s move to Barossa Valley made him lose business from several owners, reducing his stable to 16 horses from a formidable 40. Undeterred by the loss, Hayes launched his first training session at Lindsay Park on 1 August 1970, a day which catapulted the trainer to fame which lasted for 30 years. Lindsay Park before long became the most successful training and breeding complex in Australian racing history.

On the 23rd January, 1982, a day that Colin Hayes’s will never likely to forget was when he managed in a single day to win 10 individual races and creating a world record. Training horses that won races became child’s play for Hayes, a playing field that brought money, accolades, and plenty of fame, making him a most sought after trainer, which was a sharp contrast to his early days at Barossa Valley.

The champion trainer’s incredible skills paid rich dividends with thoroughbreds such as Beldale Ball, who won the 1980 Melbourne Cup, and At Talaq, the formidable winner of the 1986 Melbourne Cup. Among the other thousands of fillies, colts, and geldings to be trained by the skilled hands of Colin Hayes is Rory’s Jester, winner of the 1985 Golden Slipper Stakes, and Dulcify, winner of the VRC Derby and AJC Derby. Colin’s sons, David and Peter, followed in his footsteps. Unfortunately, Peter Hayes died in a plane crash in 2001.