Colin Hayes joins Bart Cummings as racing legends from Adelaide; Lindsay Park tradition carried on by son David
David Hayes joined his father Colin in the Australian racing hall of fame in 2008.
Image courtesy Lindsay Park Racing
Colin Hayes was elevated to legend status in the Australian horse racing hall of fame in 2018, joining two other horse trainers Tommy Smith and another Adelaide phenomenon from the 1950s: Bart Cummings.
Colin Hayes, whose son David also was installed in the hall of fame, trained 5,333 winners including 524 individual group or listed winners plus 28 Adelaide and 13 Melbourne trainers' premierships. The annual C S Hayes Stakes honours him at Flemington racecourse.
Born in the Adelaide suburb of Semaphore, Hayes’ first job was with the Electricity Trust of South Australia as a boilermaker, before his love of horses saw him buy a steeplechaser named Surefoot for £9. Hayes rode Surefoot as an amateur, with his best result a third in the 1948 Great Eastern Steeplechase at Oakbank, with the legendary story that he bet his honeymoon money, at odds of 60/1, on that result.
Moderate success with the horse allowed him to expand and set up Surefoot Lodge stables at Semaphore. Hayes won his first Adelaide trainers' premiership in 1956 and looked for a bigger place to breeding winners as well. A syndicate of people was formed to buy Lindsay Park, 800 hectares of rich Barossa Valley pasture and paddocks, with a centrepiece 38-room mansion built in 1840 by George Fife Angas from sandstone and marble quarried on the property.
In the move away from Adelaide, Hayes lost several owners and promising horses, reducing his stable from 40 to 16 horses. But over the 19 years from 1970, Hayes created one of the world’s most successful breeding and training centres. A world record 10 individual winners in a day – January 23, 1982 – is just one prime testament to that.
The thousands of races won by Hayes and his horses included Melbourne Cups (1980 Beldale Ball, 1986 At Talaq), the Caulfield Cup (1976 How Now), W.S. Cox Plate (1978 So Called, 1979 Dulcify, 1989 Almaarad) and Golden Slipper Stakes (1985 Rory’s Jester). His Adelaide Cup winners were: 1962 Cheong Sam, 1972 Wine Taster, 1980 Yashmak, 1990 Water Boatman.
Hayes had a major role in Australian breeding by standing quality stallions such as Romantic, Without Fear and Goldswalk. Horses he trained, including Rory’s Jester, At Talaq and Zebeel, had highly successful stud careers.
Hayes had two sons as trainers but Peter, at the time training Fields of Omagh, died in a plane crash in 2001. David Hayes trained a 99 Group One 5 winners, (78 in Australia, 17 in Hong Kong and one in Japan) including winners of the Melbourne Cup (Jeune 1994), Cox Plate, Caulfield Cup and Golden Slipper. Hayes became the youngest member of the Australian racing hall of fame in 2008, having trained more than 4,000 winners.
