Personality Profile August 2003

David Bridgland

A THOROUGHBRED owner, breeder, agent, manager and administrator, David Bridgland turned to racing to break away from his proposed vocation as an academic. Now, almost 25 years later, his CV includes some of the finest racing and breeding positions that any racing innovator could dream of. In this profile GRAEME KELLY speaks to a man who feels he has indeed escaped to paradise.

DURING his earliest days South Australian Breeders’ Incentive Scheme manager David Bridgland seemed destined for life as an academic.
After completing his matriculation David began studying at the University of Adelaide in 1982. Four years later a Bachelor of Science, majoring in genetics and zoology, was conferred on him.
At that stage he was steering towards an honours degree and a Doctor of Philosophy with a career being devoted to intense research.
Then however, at the age of 23, he suddenly decided on a dramatic change of direction in his life.
He joined the Adelaide-based Australian Breeders’ Co-Operative Society as a pedigree clerk. There his duties included writing pedigrees for auction catalogues, being involved in private sales as well as developing market acceptance of new sales and industry protocols.
“Earlier I had spent three months in a research laboratory at the University of Adelaide,” David said.
“When I received my degree I realised I was being confronted with the prospect of spending most of my working days looking up scientific references and looking down microscopes.
“I quickly realised that was something I didn’t really want, because I had always been an outdoors type of person. So, when the opportunity came along at ABCOS I accepted.
“I was happy but my mother wasn’t . . . she hardly spoke to me for the next six months!”
Although he is deeply immersed in the world of the thoroughbred, David is still continuing with his scholastic pursuits.
He is undertaking a Master of Business Administration course at the University of South Australia, and along the way he has earned distinctions in accounting and finance, people management, information strategies for management decisions and entrepreneurship and innovation.
“I think in those early years I found the prospect of being locked up inside all my life didn’t appeal to me. Really what I was seeking was a balance.
“I had also become interested in horses by then and I began to think they could provide a varied and challenging career for me, which they have.”
Quite remarkably, considering the startling about turn in vocation, David had little connection with the horse industry before joining ABCOS.
Although a grandfather was a mounted policeman in the Northern Territory, it was after David’s family moved from Adelaide where he was born to Darwin in 1969, that he initially began to learn something about racing.
His father John who was born in Darwin but was sent south in 1944 when the city was bombed in World War II, became a regular racegoer and owned a few horses after returning to the Northern Territory.
“In those days the races were a place where there was a lot of social interaction and I remember going along with my father,” but that came to a sudden end on Christmas Day in 1974 when Cyclone Tracy virtually destroyed Darwin. “Four days later I found myself sitting on the floor of an RAAF Hercules as an evacuee on my way to beginning a new life at boarding school in Adelaide.”
After what he describes as an “unsettled time” at Westminster School, David returned to the Northern Territory to resume studying at Darwin High School which had been rebuilt after the devastation of two years earlier.
“I spent 1976 and 1977 at Darwin High before the demands of academia determined I should head south again,” he said.
This time he went to St Peters College where he was a contemporary of David Hayes, who became a champion trainer in Adelaide, Melbourne and Hong Kong as well as becoming principal of the Lindsay Park empire on the death of his revered father Colin.
While at St Peter’s David’s intellectual attributes and skills led to him securing an exchange opportunity to attend Marlborough College in Wiltshire in England where he spent 1981.
It was on his return to the city of churches and during his first year at the University of Adelaide that he became actively involved in the racing and breeding industries.
“I leased a horse named Silver Trove who won a graduation at Morphettville,” David said.
“Then I was given an imported Sovereign Path mare named White Path. She was a non-winner and I was told if I was successful with her I would be successful with anything.”
His association with Lindsay Park began when he commenced agisting White Path at the famous property at Angaston, and with the assistance of Colin Hayes’s son-in-law Arthur Dabernig who has since risen to become manager of Collingrove’s operations in South Australia and Victoria.
It proved to be a worthwhile venture when White Path produced the winners Pure Path, Parchment, Sovereign Blood and Cool Mistress.
“I think I nearly drove Arthur and stud secretary Harry Line mad with all the questions I had, but with their help and through a careful selection of stallions I made a small profit with White Path over a five-year period.
“Looking back it was at that point that the die was cast. It was also then I discovered that the key in commercial breeding is to utilise the best people in their respective fields to maximise the chance of success in both the sales ring and on the racetrack.”
Impressing those around him as he was completing his degree, David was offered a coveted position in cancer research, which he says was sought after by other students majoring in genetics in his valedictory year.
“It was quite an offer but I declined. By that stage I’d approached ABCOS supremo Terry Haddleton about a position and I knew that was what I wanted to do, but my mother Christine wasn’t very pleased.”
Two years later David and his wife Caroline, a pharmacy manager and part-time schoolteacher, were married. David and Caroline, who these days very much enjoys a day out at the races, now have three children Annabelle, eight, Georgina, six, and Olivia who is just coming up to her first birthday.
“Caroline is not really a racing person, but she loves a day out at the races with her friends, which is great.”
Soon after their marriage his talents came to the attention of Colin Hayes. As a result, in 1989 Adelaide accountant Bob Williams, a close friend of the trainer, approached David with an offer to join the Lindsay Park operation as racing secretary.
He accepted and for the next seven years worked in association with Colin, Colin’s sons David and Peter as well as the enterprise’s present day trainer Tony McEvoy.
His duties as secretary included client account management, handling nominations, programming, race conditions and meeting deadlines as well as being involved in private sales and introducing structured sales protocols.
He also worked on developing a statistical analysis of stable performance and assisted the stud manager with matings and stud returns, which gave him an invaluable grounding in the machinations of the racing and breeding industries.
“Those years at Lindsay Park were as good a preparation for a career in racing as anyone could wish for,” David said.
“The things C.S. will most probably be remembered for are being a highly successful trainer and a highly respected businessman; but he had a lot of great personal qualities which I was privileged to come to appreciate first hand, working alongside him for seven years.
“I learned a lot from him during the time I was at Lindsay Park.”
Interestingly though, C.S., David and the late Peter all had very different leadership styles, but each had an unwavering commitment to the task at hand.
“It was a never say die spirit of which myself, Tony McEvoy and David Saegenschnitter were the prime beneficiaries.
“Tony is now leading trainer in both Adelaide and Melbourne, while David Saegenschnitter has risen to the title of general manager at Lindsay Park.”
During his time he also had the privilege of working in the Lindsay Park office with C.S.’s close friend and associate of many years Harry Line.
“Harry always said ‘Colin matches the types and I match the pedigrees,” David recalls. “From that I came to the realisation that their lifetime of teamwork had contributed greatly to the success they achieved, particularly in the early days when everything was done manually and was hard yakka.
“I have worked mainly in autonomy throughout my life but I appreciated that Harry’s words were a valuable lesson in the merits of teamwork.”
It was during his period at ABCOS that David began “tinkering” with the task of drafting an incentive scheme for South Australia at the suggestion of Terry Haddleton.
“We drew up a pilot scheme for the bloodhorse breeders, but I think it was at the bottom of the association’s agenda rather than at the top,” David said.
“Because of that it wasn’t really taken up by the industry until the early 1990s when the world record breaking athlete Kerry O’Brien, who was then the South Australian breeders’ association president, began pushing the idea very hard.
“After that other people such as Colin Hayes and the South Australian Jockey Club’s Greg Nichols also started to come aboard.”
Eventually the scheme came to fruition in 1996, 10 years after it had been originally mooted, when the State’s Racing Minister Graham Ingerson announced the establishment of SABIS. It was at that stage David resigned from his position at Lindsay Park to become the manager of the incentive scheme.
“SABIS offered me the opportunity to test my management and innovational skills. So against the advice of a number of colleagues, whose opinions I valued, I left Lindsay Park to pursue the implementation of the scheme with a team including the now British Horseracing Board chief executive Greg Nichols and dedicated Adelaide racing administrator Andrew Macdonald.
“Unfortunately Adelaide racing in the late 1990s was in a turbulent environment but we were able to weather the storm and establish new revenue streams for owners, breeders, trainers and jockeys with the purpose of driving the breeding industry further.
“The success of the incentive scheme can be gauged from the fact that the SA-sired foal crop, which is a primary key performance indicator for SABIS, in 2001 was the largest since we began SABIS in 1996.
“This in conjunction with SABIS bonus rises in September of last year, have franked my decision to take on the introduction of what I considered to be a marvellous innovation, modelled on the highly successful SuperVOBIS in Victoria.”
An enthusiastic breeder and owner who has raced other metropolitan winners Buyers and Sellers, Confessor’s Halo and Pura Seda, David admits though, that he has also found that racing can be an “unforgiving master”.
He says he learned the “hard way” through an experience with the dual Gr.2 winner Umaline, who had attracted his attention when he inspected her in a paddock at Mill Park, south of Adelaide. “I tried to buy her for two years,” he recalls. “Then I secured a part-lease on behalf of longtime partners Basil Sellers and Oren Klemich, only to lose her after a disagreement on the eve of her first race start.
“Umaline went on to earn $636,345 in prizemoney so I felt I have received a lesson in goal-orientation because this game is as much about managing people as it is about managing horses.”
Generally speaking though, David could not be happier with his role or his choice of livelihoods.
“I have always enjoyed the challenge racing provides. Whether that be in my career as an administrator or in extra-curricular activities such as producing foals, selecting yearlings and racing horses or bringing new ideas to fruition.”
However, in David’s view it is evident that modern day racing demands an educated and disciplined approach.
“As an example of where the future of the private sector lies, consider Victoria’s fledgling Eliza Park,” he said.
“The stud exemplifies a new era of professionalism with John Kohnke controlling the feeding program, Terry Alvers managing the breaking-in and Denis Roberts overseeing the operation as general manager - to mention just a few of the team.
“All three are specialists in their roles with decades of experience between them, and interestingly all three founded their careers in South Australia.”
David also believes that “for the industry to diminish its secluded nature” it must adopt issues such as quality assurance to enable racing to become a mainstream business activity.
“Risk management for newcomers is a very real issue. So also is the maintenance of an egalitarian enviroment where the average breeder can turn a profit on his produce at the yearling sales.
“The expenses and revenues equation must offer relief even for hobbyists.
“Quality racing surfaces, nil cost racedays for owners as well as consistent service fees and holding costs for breeders, are also critical issues for racing to address if it is to become a mainstream investment vehicle. “The role of volunteers who give generously of their time is another contemporary issue.
“There is no doubt South Australia has also taken great steps forward by increasing prizemoney recently and in the provision of quality racing and training surfaces, which is being greatly appreciated by those most vitally involved in the industry.”
Now, as the 21st century begins to unfold, David will seeking new challenges and formulate innovative solutions.
However on reflection he says he has been “in paradise” working in the company of people such as Colin Hayes, Harry Line, David Coles, Arthur Dabernig, David Jolly, Campbell Baker, Adrian Hancock, David Saegenschnitter, Ian Hart and Tony McEvoy - which he says has taught him “success with horses is all about teaming with the right people”.