HELP FROM ABOVE:
DAVID HAYES GOES HI-TECH
D AVID Hayes, a Hall of Fame trainer in search of his third Cox Plate, exists in a heady world of “art and science”.
From the window of his trainer’s hut at Euroa in rural Victoria he can gaze out over craggy Strathbogie ranges, while computer screens flicker at his side.
He works his horses among gum trees and laser beams.
His thoroughbreds graze and frolic among the lush greenery of Lindsay Park while a highdefinition camera mounted on a drone hovers overhead.
He plans a month in advance with an old-fashioned texta on a giant white board, but posts weekly updates on YouTube.
In many ways, Lindsay Park is a rolling contradiction, driven by the future and rooted in the past.
But for Hayes and co-trainer Tom Dabernig it all makes perfect sense.
Hayes believes training is the art, an innate craft inherited from his late father, Colin, while technology helps sells the dream.
“While we were developing the property, part of the reason I wanted a private training centre was that I could get the information out to my owners overseas, anywhere – how their horse is moving, how it’s working, how they’re racing and what they are doing next week,” said Hayes, whose family earned worldwide recognition for their previous Lindsay Park operation in South Australia.
“While we were developing we had a couple of tough years but it kept a lot of our owners, without getting results on the racetrack, in the loop and they really enjoyed our communication.”
The tough times, it would seem, are gone. The logistics of moving a dynasty more than 700km across a state border, and the multimillion-dollar financial burdens that it creates, are fading into the past.
Hayes and Dabernig have attacked the spring with a formidable team.
Stay With Me, the daughter of Miss Finland, won the Thousand Guineas, Criterion notched another Group 1 by winning the Caulfield Stakes, while Almoonqith galloped his way into Melbourne Cup contention with a slashing win in the Geelong Cup on Wednesday.
As the number of winners have increased so has the email list.
Weekly video updates are compiled in a trainer’s hut that resembles a control tower and are being sent far and wide – across the world to the owner of Bold Sniper – the Queen in England – and even down the road to the syndicate heads of the “one percenters”.
“The idea is that they can actually get to watch their horse, get to know it, and make their own mind up on it,” Hayes says.
“I don’t have to boom it or sledge it. And it’s all electronically timed, the gallops, you can see the laser beams on the track, so it goes through to the computer and I can give them the times.
“It’s bringing owners closer to your business.”
Then there is the $2000 drone, the brain child of Cameron Wallace, who heads up owner communications at Lindsay Park.
He says the idea came from looking at how drone footage was used on rural real estate websites.
It allows Lindsay Park to how owners every aspect of the breathtaking property as well as watching horses work.
In time, Wallace says, will be able to follow jockey around the training track by linking wirelessly to an arm
This hi-tech treasure does not make the horses faster but provides Hayes a Dabernig with a virtual third
Even when Hayes was in England preparing Criterion his assault on Royal Ascot, he was still in his trainer’s at Euroa.
“I still think, training for more of a gut feel and an trust your instincts,” Hayes
“But it does help watchin replay. So if I watch a gallop think ‘uh, that was ordinary
I get to watch it again and a and I’m really on top of how are working.
The idea is that they can actually get to watch their horse, get to know it ... it’ s bringing owners closer to your business
TRAINER DAVID HAYES