Both ‘foals’ of the tough days of the1920s, albeit three and a half years apart, they each grew up with the tang of salt air in their nostrils at Adelaide beach side suburbs 20 minutes apart and close to Morphettville racecourse and carved out careers in racing that saw them honoured by the nation and inducted into Australian Racing Hall of Fame.

Colin Hayes, born February 1924 and deceased at only 65 in May 1999, graduated from a being a boilermaker and owner, trainer and amateur rider of an $18 purchased steeplechase winner to found a racing and breeding empire at Angaston, Barossa Valley, under the name of Lindsay Park that led Australia and helped revolutionise overseas involvement in this part of the world. 

The father of David Hayes, one of  Australia’s leading trainers and like his father inducted into the Hall of Fame, and grandfather of Tom Dabernig (David’s training partner) and Sam Hayes, enterprising founder of the Cornerstone Stud on Lindsay Park, Colin Hayes is recorded as having conditioned 5333 winners, including 524 successful in stakes. 

Despite the fact that he was headquar tered in South Australia, he was premier  Victorian trainer for 13 years in                              succession, 1977-78 to1989-90. 

Also then based at Lindsay Park, but now in Victoria, David Hayes led for the next five years and then his brother Peter ruled in 1995-96 and for three successive years 1998-1999 – 2001-02. 

Tragically, Peter was killed in March 2001 in a small plane crash.

Colin Hayes won most of the majors in Australia, including two Melbourne Cups, succeeding with the imports Beldale Ball (USA) (for Robert Sangster’s Swettenham Stud) 1980 and At Talaq (USA) (Dubai’s Sheikh Hamdan Maktoum) 1986. 

Beldale Ball was the first imported Melbourne Cup winner since Backwood (GB) in 1924.

Although Hayes had other cup place getters, he was far outshone in this race, the world’s most prestigious staying test, by his great rival Bart Cummings, one of the world’s greatest judges of potential stayers and trainers of them. Applauded as the ‘Cups King’, Cummings is mourned by the whole of Australia and also New Zealand following his death at 87 at his Princes Farm in the Hawkesbury Valley at the weekend. 

 Princes Farm was a showplace developed mid last century by Sydney restaurateur, author and racing identity Jim Bendroit. 

He owned the fashionable Princes restaurant in Sydney city.

The Don Bradman of racing, Bart Cummings was held in such high regard for his training performances, he is to be farewelled by the nation with a State Funeral in Sydney next Monday. 

He trained for 60 years and had a winner, Sultry Feeling, at Rosehill Gardens on Saturday, albeit trained in partnership with his grandson James Cummings.

His greatest achievement was the selecting and conditioning of a record 12 Melbourne Cup winners, including giants of Australian racing Light Fingers (they called her mother), Galilee, Red Handed – a trio successful in the successive years of 1965, 1966 and 1967, Think Big (twice,1974, 1975), Gold and Black (1977), Let’s Elope (1991) and Saintly (1996).

 He bred Saintly and raced him in partnership with great friend and stables supporter Dato Tan Chin Nam, a leading Malaysian businessman who also owned three other Cummings Cup winners Viewed (2008) and Think Big. 

Like eight of the other Cummings Cup winners, Saintly was sired in New Zealand, but he brought him greater joy as he bred him using great granddaughter of Dark Queen, a three-quarter sister to Storm Queen, an exceptionally brilliant filly. 

Bred and raced by his brother Pat out of Bart’s Adelaide stables, she won 13 of 20 starts, eight of the successes, including the Golden Slipper, Champagne Stakes and VRC Sires’ Produce Stakes, coming at two.

Storm Queen was the first of four Slipper winners prepared by Bart Cummings, the others being Tontonan (1973), Vivarchi (1976) and Century Miss (1979). 

He chose a country apprentice, Wayne Harris (Pat Muswellbrook) to pilot Century Miss. 

Harris in 1994 won the Melbourne Cup on the imported Jeune for trainer.

Bart Cummings provided one of the greatest moments in racing when he won his first Melbourne Cup with Light Fingers in1965. 

In the final 100 metres Light Fingers and stablemate Ziema forged clear and had a nostril to nostril titanic struggle to the line, separated by a half head at the finish. 

Light Fingers backed up a year later to finish second in the cup, the second of the five times Bart supplied the first two home in the race. 

He had the quinella in 1974, Think Big and Leilani,1975, Think Big and Holiday Waggon, and 1991, Viewed and Shiva’s Revenge.

In the year he won his first Melbourne Cup, Bart stamped his genius as a sire of stayers by also winning the Adelaide, Caulfield, Sandown, Sydney and Brisbane Cups.

Light Fingers was not Bart’s first taste of Melbourne Cup success for at 23 years he strapped the 1950 winner of race, Comic Court, for his father Jim Cummings. 

An old style South Australian born horseman, Jim, after breaking in horses for a relation near Alice Springs, rode horses the 1500 kilometres to Adelaide and set up as a trainer at Glenelg.

A trainer who early in his career gave his horses a lot of beach work and occasionally put them over jumps, Bart Cummings took over the stables in1953 and went on to condition over 90 cup runners and to win races across the whole spectrum of distances.

On three occasions annexer of the  Victorian and South Australian Trainer’s Premiership in the same year and the leading Sydney trainer in1989-90, he won some 8000 races, among them most of the principal races in Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane and Adelaide. 

His 268 Group1 race wins (83 at Flemington) included, besides the Melbourne Cups and Slippers, the Caulfield Cup (seven times), Cox Plate (five), Derbys (33), Oaks (nine), Mackinnon (11), Newmarket (eight) and Australian Cup (13), Caulfield Guineas (five), Thousand Guineas (five), Lightning (seven), Doncaster (five) and  Stradbroke (five).

He had nine of his charges, Dayana, Taj Rossi, Leilani, Lord Dudley, Maybe Mahal, Hyperno, Beau Zam, Let’s Elope and Saintly, named Australian Horse of the Year. 

Bart called Adelaide home in the early years of his training career and then moved to Sydney, establishing Leilani Lodge at Randwick. 

He also had stables at Flemington which in recent years have been called Saintly Lodge.

In a tribute, the Flemington headquartered Victoria Racing Club mourns the passing of perhaps the greatest horseman to step on their course. 

“In the sport of kings, Bart Cummings stands alone. He was the Cups King and his record is flawless” they eulogised.

Besides his OAM and Australian Racing Hall of Fame induction, accepted into the Australian Sports Hall of Fame, listed in 1997 in the top hundred in the National Trust Living Treasures and his image placed on postal stamps in 2007, this laconic, bushy eye browed Australian legend leaves a legacy of a million memories and a training dynasty that is likely to be significant for much of this century. 

He is survived by his wife of 61 years, Valmae, Group1 training son Anthony Cummings (Randwick), daughters Margaret and Anne Marie and 14 grandchildren. 

Two grandsons are Anthony’s stable foreman Edward and Bart’s training partner of the last two years, James.

I had the rare privilege to get to know James Bartholomew (Bart) Cummings on a personal basis over a number of years in the late eighties. 

We worked together, we lunched together (Darcy’s and Beppi’s Restaurants were his favourite spots) and spent enjoyable times on the harbour in his beloved Good Ship ‘Leilani’. 

They were fun times and I enjoyed his company immensely. 

Whilst a very private and retiring person, Bart was extremely intelligent and possessed a wonderful wit and a capacity to express a lot in a few words. 

I recall sitting in his office one day when a high profile Sydney businessman came in and sat opposite Bart at his desk. 

He proceeded to boast in a fairly bombastic manner about the horses he owned and what he was about to purchase, then asked Bart what he would be charged to train his horses. 

Bart’s response was classic – after clearing his throat (in that inimitable Bart Cummings style) he said “Well it’s $65 per day but if you want to help it will be $75.” 

In less than 20 words he had terminated the conversation and the relationship!

Bart was never one to seek publicity, he was basically shy and retiring, but with success comes publicity. 

His extraordinary success ensured that he was forced to endure far more exposure than he was comfortable with but he handled it with grace, wit and occasional panache and in so doing won the hearts and respect of most journalists and all Australians.

Bart Cummings was a true legend (a status he attained in his forties), an icon of Australian sport, an inspiration for so many in the industry and a man possessed of a passion for the Australian Thoroughbred that may never be matched. 

Like Bradman before him, Bart leaves us with a record that will set a benchmark that will be admired by all, sought after by many and achieved by no-one.