Colin Sidney Hayes (1924–1999), was born at Semaphore and educated at Lefevre Primary School and Woodville High School. While still a schoolboy Hayes saved for an occasional lesson at a local riding school; a horse-riding accident at 17 disqualified him from military service during the Second World War.
Hayes quickly acquired a reputation as an expert handler and judge of horses, and an astute businessman. From 1945–50 he was an owner/trainer of horses, rode as an amateur, and in 1949, the year he married, won the 1860-metre event at Cheltenham on his first racehorse; in 1950 he became a public trainer. In 1965, when he had become Adelaide’s leading trainer, besides training horses for Arab sheiks and English millionaires, Hayes moved his stables from Semaphore to ‘Lindsay Park’ near Angaston in the Barossa Valley.
By 1980 Hayes had produced 3000 winners, and in the next decade he trained another 2300. In 1975–76 the Lindsay Park stallion ‘Without Fear’ produced 30 winners from his first crop of two-year olds. By 1990 Hayes had bred 1937 winners at Lindsay Park, won 7398 races with $40.5 million stake money, and held many records. With his family he established and was director of Angas Park Fruits at Gawler Park, was deputy chairman of the South Australian Totalisator Agency Board, commissioner of Australian Sports Commission and executive director of the Australian Breeders’ Co‑operative.
