Trainer
David grew up in the Riverina area of New South Wales, working with horses was a part of his daily life. David represented Australia in Europe, Japan and America, as part of the Australian Show Jumping team. He made the team in 1990 and became Captain of the Australian Team in 1992. In 1994 he was a reserve for the World Championship Team and in 1995 he successfully competed in Europe, and was named as part of the Australian Team for the Olympic Qualifiers and in 2000 he was shortlisted for the Sydney Olympic Games Team.
At the same time as he was representing Australia around the world in the show jumping arena, David was also developing his interests in training racehorses and in 1986, David began training racehorses, with a small team of horses.
After the success of Burrowye Lord in the 1998 Grand National Steeplechase and Centrix in the 1999 National Hurdle, David increased his focus on training racehorse and following the 2000 Olympics, David gave away the show jumping game and became a full time racehorse trainer.
David had considerable success with steeplechasers and hurdlers in the past, however the focus changed to developing horses that are competitive at the highest level on the flat and this was achieved with 3 Group 1 winners: Grand Journey, Griante and Princess Jenni.
Notable horses
Assistant Trainer
Matt grew up in Tatura, Northern Victoria.
His introduction to racehorses was as a 16-year-old when he went to work for a local Tatura trainer as a stable-hand. He was instantly keen to progress in this field, so weekend riding lessons became a regular thing which enable him to gain the basic riding skills needed to become an apprentice jockey.
As an apprentice jockey with his weight gaining and opportunities diminishing, he moved to the larger Lindsay Park Racing Stables at Euroa, with Trainer David Hayes. This was an excellent chance to broaden his knowledge of the many aspects it takes to prepare and train racehorses, seeing the progression from young horses on the farm, through to feature race winners. It was his association there with other jockeys and the chance to track ride successful racehorses at the highest level, that gave him the desire to have another crack at race riding.
To give himself more opportunities to pursue this dream, he moved to ride at Caulfield & Mornington to give himself a wider range of Trainers and the opportunity to re gain his approval from the Stewards to race ride and continue his apprenticeship.
Unfortunately, in this period he has a serious track work fall and was hospitalised for 10 weeks and faced the long road to recovery he had ahead of him.
It was in that time he turned his hand to Jockey Management. This gave him an insight to another aspect of racing, which he was thankful for, and it allowed him to stay involved in the industry.
After this accident, race riding was out of the question, so he investigated the Training / Management side of Racing and obtained a position with Henry Dwyer, firstly as a Trackwork rider and later becoming his Racing Assistant. In his time with Henry, amongst many race winners the highlight was a Group 1 victory with Precious Gem.
In 2020 Matt joined Brideoake Racing as David’s Assistant Trainer. His outstanding work ethic, dedication to the job and communication to owners is commendable. This is now progressing to a Training Partnership with David. With his Trainer registration nearly completed we look forward to exciting times ahead, having Matt on board, with great enthusiasm for continued success.
