Thoroughbred help for heart disease.

Race horses and heart disease run in trainer David Hayes’ family. So now he’s training a big-hearted thoroughbred to raise money for heart research. We think he’s on a winner.

To look a gift horse in the mouth is something we would never do here at the Baker – relying heavily as we do on donations and bequests to keep our research going – and until now we assumed the phrase was metaphorical.

Not so now – meet Baker Heart, a two year old colt who is most likely to be the promising thoroughbred chosen by David Hains’ Kingston Park Stud and top trainer David Hayes to wear the Baker colours.

After trialling a dozen Kingston Park horses for the past 18 months to pick the best for the Baker Institute he has picked a two-year old named Mount Victory.   His name was subsequently changed and accordingly will now race as Baker Heart.

Prize money will go towards heart research and its complications while raising awareness of cardiovascular disease.

We believe we will be the only medical research institute in the nation with its very own racehorse.

It is a heart-felt gift from David whose father, legendary trainer Colin Hayes, died weeks after suffering a heart attack in 1999.

Colin Hayes was one of the first Australians to undergo a quadruple bypass, 24 years earlier, and also had a triple bypass.

David says his dad was proud to have been one of Adelaide’s “longest surviving zipper club members”.

With his grandfather Benjamin Hayes also dying from heart problems at just 49, Hayes admits there is a personal side to the generous donation.

“It’s a good cause and I’ll probably need it one day,” Hayes says.

“With our family history it is our weakness, so it is something very close to me.

“And I’ve been responsible for people sitting near me who I’m sure have had high blood pressure and angina at times.”

With an entire institute riding on its back, Baker director Professor Garry Jennings hopes whichever horse is selected will have a Phar Lap-sized ticker.

“It’s a wonderful way of making a donation and actually giving us something we can use,” Garry says.

“Every now and then someone gets a bit of angina when the Melbourne Cup is on, so the link is not too indirect for us.

“Horses also get a lot of the problems people do – particularly arrhythmias and often one that tails off has an irregular heartbeat where some of the rhythms are very similar to what happens in people – so we might more into not just trying to save mankind but horse kind too.”

Institute staff were so excited about their new colleague they suggested 120 different names for the horse, including everything from Racing Heart, Atrial Flutter and Baker’s Ticker, to Natures Pump and Vas Q La.

Bred by Argentinian stallion Ice Point out of Stellar Spirit, David expects Baker Heart to prove himself a good metropolitan class horse worth a minimum of $150,000, plus $30,000 a year worth of training.