Who was I?

Cover image courtesy of Sportpix

Colin Sidney Hayes was 75 years old when he died in 1999, one of the great geniuses of horse racing. His kind expression, square spectacles and utter brilliance had been known the length of Australia, as much a legend as Bart Cummings and TJ Smith, and as much a master as Ireland’s Vincent O’Brien.

Even today, it is hard to grasp the South Australian’s complete success.

From two Melbourne Cups to three Cox Plates, a Golden Slipper in 1985 and four Victoria Derbies, Hayes won almost everything. He took three Blue Diamonds, four Newmarkets, a Caulfield Cup and a Sydney Cup, and he trained 524 individual stakes winners.

Hayes won 28 Adelaide trainers’ premierships and a further 13 across the border in Melbourne, and he had horses like Dulcify (NZ) (Decies {GB}), Zabeel (NZ), At Talaq (USA), Rory’s Jester and Special (Habituate {Ire}). He set a world record in 1982 of 10 city winners in a single day and, through his 43-year training career, his records went on and on.

Gallery: Some of the influential Group 1 winners Colin Hayes trained, images courtesy of Sportpix

He was posthumously inducted into the Australian Racing Hall of Fame in 2001, its very first year, alongside Cummings, Smith and Phar Lap (NZ) (Night Raid {GB}), Carbine (NZ) and Bernborough.

Like the greatest horsemen, Hayes had an instinct for his craft. He knew what it took to be successful and to produce winning thoroughbreds, and in 1976 he spoke about it.

“Horses are four-fifths hard work and routine, and one-fifth intuition,” he said. “It’s probably that last fifth that is so important in selecting winners.”

In 1965, after an inspiring visit to country England, Hayes brought together Harry Cornell, Ron Hutchinson, Don McKay, Wyndham Hill Smith and Peter Richardson, and together they purchased the 400-acre estate of Lindsay Park. With its red gums, ivy-clad stone walls and 130-year-old colonial homestead in the Barossa Valley, the property was a revelation.

Hayes was told that Lindsay Park was too far out of town, that owners would desert him to remain in the metro enclaves, but if it happened, it wasn’t noticeable as the training and breeding operation became one of the best of its kind the world over.

Lindsay Park stood the likes of Jeune, Rory’s Jester and Without Fear (Fr), as all the while Hayes worked alongside the legendary Robert Sangster to establish the shuttle-stallion concept in Australia and the Northern Hemisphere ideal of breeding to Southern Hemisphere time.

In 1977, the property hosted a visit by Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip, but that esteemed pair simply joined a long line of prime ministers, politicians, television stars and Arab royalty that frequented the Lindsay Park drawing room in its glorious heyday.

For Hayes, family was everything.

Son David was just 27 years old when his father bowed out in 1990, handing over a legacy to both he and his now late brother Peter that was more priceless than any in Australian racing. The patriarch lived for another nine years before he passed away on May 21, 1999.

It had been a long and magnificent career for Colin Hayes, one as much filled with hard work as success. It had started in working-class row with a £9 gymkhana pony called Surefoot, and, by the end, it was as decorated a career as racing is ever likely to see again.