Sink or swim – How the next generation of the Hayes dynasty made their own success

When crisis after crisis hit Lindsay Park in 2021, David Hayes was stranded on the other side of the equator. But four years on, he and his sons know that moment has proven the making of their current run of success.

David Hayes once stood on a sharp ravine overlooking his lavish Euroa training farm and proclaimed to a reporter: “All of this is for the kids, you know.”

The breathtaking property was both an irresistible and risky legacy project.

It was around 2010 and the kids – three boys, including twins, and a daughter – were either at school or university. The twins, JD and Will, were promising footballers.

Creating the second Lindsay Park at Creighton’s Creek just south of Euroa had come at a scary cost of over $10 million. Hayes had never cut corners, so the bills kept piling up.

It had all the tools. In fact it was far more flash and functional than the first Lindsay Park, in the Barossa Valley. So distilled was the water in the horse pool that during a particular media day, Hayes dipped a cup in it and drank from it.

But despite the trappings, the horses weren’t performing. Would the kids want to inherit this?

Hayes had just taken over Melbourne Cup winner Americain, who was to be the banner horse for the new beginning. Americain failed to win a race for his new stable while well-bred favourites were being beaten at bush tracks like Corowa.

Hayes clawed his way out of strife, the kids began to turn their minds to horse training and family history and a modest fella recruited by Hayes’ father Colin in 1967 kept toiling away as the invisible backbone of the famous Hayes dynasty.

His name was Gary Fennessy, and he is still there. He is now 73 and according to David Hayes, is the secret hero of a story that has never stopped evolving.

The boys, Ben, Will and JD, now train in partnership. Sister Sophie plays a major role in the running of the business, under some guidance from mum Prue in Hong Kong.

The brothers are flying, hot on the tail of mercurial Ciaron Maher and Chris Waller. Five years ago this was inconceivable because of a dramatic sequence of events that many believed would destroy the dynasty.

First, in 2020, David departed for a second stint in Hong Kong, leaving Ben as the understudy to long-time family servant Tom Dabernig, who then left in mid-2021.

Sheikh Hamdan, a stalwart client from the days of CS Hayes, died around the same time, prompting the end of the Shadwell business in Australia, further sapping stable stock. Amid pandemic lockdowns, David Hayes was prevented from physically overseeing the father-to-sons transition.

Hayes, then in the midst of re-establishing himself in Hong Kong, describes it as “a terrible time”.

The constant in all of this Fennessy, who’d grown up in Port Melbourne, rode ponies at Bulleen on weekends as a teenager and wandered into Coilin Hayes’ Ascot Vale stable of just eight horses in 1967.

Nicknamed “Bim” as a toddler, after a circus elephant (because Bim had been a very big baby), Fennessy is the coveted elder statesman of the Euroa Farm.

“When I went to Hong Kong, three massive things happened,” Hayes said. “Tom left, Sheikh Hamdan died, then COVID hit.

“It was a very tough time. Everyone was saying the boys were too young. We needed winners. Gary Fennessy guided the operation through that delicate period. He’d always played an important role but through that two-year period Gary was invaluable.”

Ben Hayes agrees that Fennessy’s guidance during this period was crucial

“Gary is unique,” says Ben Hayes. “He’s seen all three generations of the Hayes family coming through. He knows the systems the stable has had from the start, right back to my grandfather. He’s got so much knowledge and we’ve been privileged to be able to use it.”

Fennessy, of course, regards himself as no more than a small cog in a big wheel. “They don’t seem to mind having me around,” he said.

David Hayes never doubted the kids and neither did Fennessey.

“I’d been in Hong Kong three months and Tom rang up at Christmas time and said he wanted to do his own thing. I never saw it coming. He took quite a few staff and horses and we were vulnerable. It hurt. It exposed our Achilles heel,” he said.

“COVID was a shocker, made worse by all those horses leaving, Bella Nipotina, Personal went to the US and others. It was a horrible feeling. I couldn’t get back because of COVID to help the boys. I was a phone call away, but I couldn’t physically be there.

“My stable was really struggling and so were the boys. I lost 40 of my 70 horses in 18 months. I can tell you Prue and I were under a lot of stress and discomfort. Basically, many people were saying the Hayes stables in two jurisdictions were both stuffed.

“That’s what makes it so pleasurable now. The Hong Kong stable is flying (and has the world’s top-rated horse in Ka Ying Rising) and my sons are almost the leading trainers in Australia.”

That day in 2010, when David Hayes stood on the ravine overlooking a farm that was on the verge of financially crippling him, there was indeed no guarantee his legacy would be fulfilled.

Ben Hayes admits he stumbled rather than galloped into the family business. At 35, he is the senior sibling.

“Dad never pushed any of us into the training,” he said.

“To be honest I really got into racing at school and only because my mates wanted tips. I tried hard at school but it didn’t come easy to me so I just started going to the stables, mucking out boxes, hopping on the pony,” he said,

“But I really loved sport as well. In the end I just fell in love with it, loved seeing how it was done, and I think my brothers would tell you the same.”

David Hayes and Fennessy never believed those who doubted the credentials of the Hayes kids.

“A lot of people had opinions, but they didn’t know,” David said.

“Ben, the eldest, is a bit of a quiet achiever who doesn’t sell his wares as well as the twins but he’s a highly effective guy. I never doubted their training ability because they learned the same way I did; sitting in cars and listening, non-stop racing around the dinner table, wall-to-wall racing. You just gain a sort of racing intelligence.

“These boys have more racing experience than some who have been doing it for 40 years.”

Fennessy offers an arm’s-length take on the three sons.

“They’re all a bit different. Benny is the anchor, very smart with horses, a real thinker. JD is more like the old man, the way he trains, a hard worker who gets things done. Will went off and played footy but he’s come in and does a great job running Pakenham and Flemington.

“There’s argy-bargy, they’re at each other every second day but at the end of the day they sit down and basically say ‘yeah you’re right, let’s get on with it’.”

Amid it all, sister Sophie has been working behind the scenes. Currently, assistant general manager, she oversees HR, strategic planning and administrative functions.

When things got tough in 2021, David Hayes knew that only one thing would bring the horses and clients back.

“When the owners left there was no point me telling me the kids could train, they needed to prove they could and the only way was with winners,” he said.

“You don’t have to talk if you’re winning and look at them. They’re training big winners and four or five winners a week including 10 or 15 horses that can string four or five wins on the trot. That’s what does the talking.”

Mr Brightside, a pickup from the New Zealand ready to runs, was the catalyst but the story quickly became bigger than one headline horse. In the blink of an eye, the siblings have trained nine Group 1 winners – five this season – and 42 at stakes level.

Last weekend in Brisbane, they won the famous Stradbroke Handicap with War Machine, one of an army of topliners being aimed up at the spring carnival. It was the stable’s first-ever victory in Queensland’s greatest race.

In the first full season together in 2021/22, Ben and JD Hayes trained 117 winners, with a lone Group 1. Three seasons later, with the three brothers’ names now in the form guide, they have 231 winners for the current campaign, five at the top level.

“I can tell you Prue and I were under a lot of stress and discomfort. Basically, many people were saying the Hayes stables in two jurisdictions were both stuffed” – David Hayes

It is Lindsay Park’s most successful on those metrics since 2017/18, while they are set to break the previous seasonal mark for prize money in the next week.

They have trained just nine fewer winners to this point than Chris Waller, who has been the top dog for over a decade, and less than 40 behind Ciaron Maher.

 “It’s a big step to think the boys can topple Chris Waller, a really big step,” David Hayes said.

“But I reckon they can go very close. They don’t buy big at the sales, they’re never playing at the top bracket, but they’ve done amazingly well in the $80,000 to $250,000 bracket.

“But it’s all about attracting good horses, the Mr Brightsides. And the only way you do that is by proving yourself and that’s exactly what they are doing, despite what the doubters thought.”