Tom Dabernig finds his calling after learning from the master, CS Hayes
He cut his teeth taking calls from Bob Hawke and Kamahl looking for tips from his grandfather. But now Tom Dabernig is making his own name — as CS Hayes intended.
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A WEEK before Colin Hayes passed away he presented Tom Dabernig with a special gift.
The legendary trainer summoned his grandson and handed over one of his prized possessions — a gold stop watch.
“It was from his first international trip, it was the first time he’d won a bit of money so he went over there and bought it in Paris,” Tom explains.
“And he had it engraved: ‘Good luck for the future’.”
Almost 20 years later everything has worked out exactly the way the great CS Hayes wanted with Dabernig part of the family business as co-trainer with his son David and another grandson Ben.
To racing outsiders he’s “the other guy”. They have heard of the Hayes name but would have no idea about the third name now attached in their racebook as they sip champagne in the Birdcage.
Some of them might have seen the immaculately dressed, softly spoken, polite man being interviewed on TV from time-to-time but that’s about it.
So who is Tom Dabernig?
Well, he’s everything you see on TV when we meet at the stable’s jewel in the crown, Lindsay Park in Euroa, a magnificent 1200-acre property in north-east Victoria with a state-of-the-art training facility for 230 horses.
The grand tour in his four-wheel drive is mouth-dropping stuff and it’s all Tom’s baby.
He’s the man in charge of this slick operation which has people and horses going in every direction.
He’s been going for six hours by the time breakfast is served in the boardroom at 9.30am.
It’s as spectacular as the rest of the place with trophies and photos covering the walls and a giant painting of CS Hayes’ favourite horse, Dulcify, the stand-out.
The first giveaway about Tom’s standing in the dynasty is the fact his mobile phone number originally belonged to Colin. And at one stage CS even pushed for Dabernig to adopt the Hayes name or at least hyphenate it to his surname.
“Just with the Hayes name being so recognisable with Lindsay Park and the business ... I remember the parents discussing it but I never had much say in it,” he says.
Tom is the son of David’s older sister Jan and he grew up on the famous Lindsay Park property in South Australia, within walking distance of where CS and Betty Hayes lived.
His father, Arthur, was the stud manager while his mother worked in the front office.
From day one Tom was indoctrinated into his surroundings.
He learnt to ride young and quickly picked up the racing lingo by hanging around with the stablehands and jockeys.
While CS officially retired in 1990 and David took over the training ranks, he was still heavily involved in the business and Tom became his chauffeur.
“I used to drive him to the races because his driving got a bit hairy towards the end.
“You would pick up a lot because he would be talking to clients on the phone or he’d be working out why the horse didn’t run well and what he should be doing with its next run.
“I was like a sponge soaking it all in.”
He also used to answer the phone on Saturday’s when the office line was diverted to the main house.
Owners would regularly ring up to check results while there were also some other interesting callers, even from the highest office in the land, requesting time with CS.
“I remember the phone rang one day and there would be this gruff person on the end and he would say, ‘Is your grandpa there?’.
“I would say, ‘Who’s speaking?’ And he said: ‘Bob Hawke’.
“He was looking for tips and this happened more than once. Kamahl also used to ring for tips.”
While he had never thought of doing anything else, the penny dropped for Tom when he spent four months in Melbourne during the spring of 1994.
“I did some strapping and all the stuff at the track,” he said.
“We had Blevic win the Derby and Jeune won the Melbourne Cup, it really hooked me in.”
The Hayes dynamic changed not long after when David moved to Hong Kong and his older brother Peter took over as Lindsay Park’s trainer.
Colin passed away in 1999 and then Peter was killed in a plane crash in 2001 with long-time foreman Tony McEvoy taking over the reins.
During this time Dabernig had climbed the ranks to an assistant trainer and had also done two different stints in England and Ireland to further his skills set.
At the age of 28 he decided it was time to have a crack himself.
He moved to Murray Bridge, an hour’s drive out of Adelaide, where he had 20 horses in work and soon had his first winner at Victoria Park named Tuscan Wings which, ironically, narrowly beat a Lindsay Park runner.
“It was one of those things where as much as I was grateful for what I’d done and all the things that I’d seen . . . (you don’t know) until you sort of feel like you’d done it yourself,” he said. “I had these ambitions that it (training) was what I wanted to do.”
He was happily “keeping his head above water” for two years before being lured back when David returned from Hong Kong and overhauled the business.
For a period Tom leased the farm at Euroa and operated a successful horse-breaking business before the decision was made to sell Lindsay Park in SA and focus on building an equivalent in Victoria.
McEvoy left in 2010 to train in his own right and after a quiet couple of years David Hayes approached his nephew in 2014 to start a training partnership.
“He said, ‘Look, why don’t we give it a go?’ and then added that we might lose a bit of business because of it,” Tom says. “But pretty much from the time we started we had a pretty good run.”
Their first runner together called Wilderness won at Geelong. They have since won 14 Group 1s as a partnership with Ben entering the mix in 2016.
It seems a perfect fit with Ben looking after the stable’s Flemington base, Tom in Euroa and David floating inbetween both while also freeing him up to focus on building the business.
Tom and David are very different personalities — there is a 14 year age gap — but they clearly complement each other.
“I am probably a bit more conservative,” Tom says. “David is very optimistic and he loves taking a challenge and a risk.
“He has probably helped me to realise that sometimes you just have to put yourself right out there and have a go because it’s amazing sometimes what can happen.”
While David is fanatical about the AFL, Tom struggles to focus on anything outside of horse racing and his young family which includes wife Cassi and three boys aged 11, 7 and 2.
He takes time off around June every year and as a family they try to have an “active” holiday, the most recent involved surfing lessons.
Cassi and Tom met in the South Australian coastal town of Robe where his parents had a holiday house.
She is a primary school teacher who does some relief work locally and the family has moved off the farm and into the township of Euroa to be closer to the boys school.
Cassi recently got Netflix installed in a bid to get her husband’s mind off the horses but other than watching the El Capo series about a Mexican drug lord, the move hasn’t been successful.
“I must admit the kids use it more than I do,” Tom says.
“The thing is if you take your foot off the pedal there is someone else who is pushing hard and gets ahead. That’s why you’ve just got to keep your head down and keep going.”
There’s no surprise that his mantra on horse training comes from his grandfather.
“He (Colin) was very big on, and it sounds very simple and basic, but he was very big on routine, as much for the horse as the staff.
“He was fanatical about feeding at the same time and working the horses at the same time.”
Tom is quietly confident about the Flemington carnival with a couple of live Derby chances and Ventura Storm, who won the Moonee Valley Cup, a confirmed starter in the Melbourne Cup while the highly rated Jaameh needs to win the Lexus Handicap to get a gig for next Tuesday.
A famous CS quote: ‘The Future Belongs To Those Who Plan For It’ adorns the sign post out the front of the Euroa property.
It couldn’t be more appropriate when talking about Tom Dabernig given Colin’s plan all along was to have “the other guy” exactly where he is today.
TOM’S RUNNERS ON SATURDAY
1. JAAMEH (Derby Day — Lexus Stakes):
Needs to win to get into the Melbourne Cup. Has great Flemington form and been trained specifically for this week.
2. LONG LEAF (Derby Day — Coolmore Stud Stakes):
Fastnet Rock colt who has been set for this race. Has been kept fresh and won a trial down the straight last week. Looks like pressure will be on up front which will suit his run-on style.
3. CHAMPAGNE BOOM (Cup Day — Bumble Stakes)
Exciting two-year-old by Spirit of Boom who won her first start at Caulfield. Owned by an all-girls syndicate which includes my wife so the pressure is on.
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