The phone rang Turnbull Stakes morning and it was Lindsey Smith wanting to catch up and have a feed at the local watering hole, the Whalers Hotel.

It didn’t take much to twist my (Matt Stewart) arm.

I always love my lunch catch ups with Lindsey as he’s always full of funny stories and has a wonderful knowledge of the horse racing caper.

So when he asks, it’s very hard to say ‘no’.

Lindsey doesn’t like the spotlight and if I’m completely honest, doesn’t like being around many people.

He’s quirky, quite shy and a little different. But it’s good different.

He sees things differently to most.

He's a deep thinker and he’s very, very smart.

When you finally get him to relax, you won't find a funnier and more positive person to be around.

People love him, he's infectious and he’s probably one of the most caring people you will ever meet.

If you gave him $100k tomorrow, he would share it with everyone and anyone just because he could.

So I was intrigued when he started the conversation with how bad the stable was travelling and the how the other Warrnambool trainers were just battling as well.

Most would put it down to the wet weather and the lack of dry track conditions. But not Lindsey.

“You wait, the next few weeks and we will be back and back in a big way,” he said.

Lindsey oozed confidence and, generally, when he’s confident, he’s very rarely wrong.

During out time chatting on Racing.com, he would tell you straight up how each horse would go and nine times out of 10 he was 100 per cent spot on.

His most loyal owner and great mate Chris Wells (The Gypsy King) reckons he’s the best judge he’s seen and has an unbelievable knack of getting horses to their optimum fitness and he always has them looking magnificent.

He reckons it's the conditioning he does in the soft sand and there’s an art form to it.

So what was his reasoning with the locals not going as well?

Lindsey says: “I’ve been at them for months to replenish the sand track on course. It needs fresh soft sand a couple of times a year.

“It makes the horses work harder and you can get them aerobically fitter. You watch in the next couple of weeks there will be winners everywhere.”

He was spot on.

There were seven local winners from Warrnambool trainers in a week including Tuvalu in the Group 1 Toorak Handicap, Sirileo Miss from Symon Wilde’s team in the Ladies Day Vase and rising star Toregene from Matty Williams.

The King of the Sand has absolutely nailed it again. But was it pure coincidence?

Lindsey is adamant it isn’t and he hopes people are starting to listen to him now.

So where did Lindsey's love of the soft sand come from?

The answer is all about love.

In 1999, back home in Perth, a chance meeting with close friend Jason Oliver introduced him to a friend called Rebecca.

Lindsey instantly fell in love, but Rebecca was a little younger and it’s fair to say Lindsey had been in a good paddock and wasn’t in the best shape of his life.

So from that point forward he knew if he was to woo the younger lady he’d fallen for, he needed to shed some pounds.

“I drove out of that meeting and on the way home I was about to swing straight into Hungry Jacks but out of the corner of my eye I saw a sign that said get fit for $99. So I had a choice to make and I chose fitness.

“I walked in and met the trainer. He said lift up your top and let's see what’s underneath. He looked me straight in the eye and said it's going to cost you more than $99 to get you fit.

“This started me off on a whole new path learning about fitness and getting myself fit and how to go about it.

“The trainer used to talk about a bloke he’d met in America called Paul Westhead, who famously coached the Los Angeles Lakers.

“He would train his players up a soft sand running track in Central Park and he couldn’t believe how much fitter he would get them and how much more conditioned they would be.

“Where our stables were, we had a perfect area of soft sand and some undulating hills so I put myself to the test first and started training and running in the soft sand.

“The weight came off me and my fitness levels went through the roof. Was I onto something different? I was working with a great mate Justin Warwick and we had a few trotters and we got a few gallopers and we thought ‘let's give this a fair dinkum go’.

“The first galloper we had was a horse called Old Cobber. He won nine races in a row in seven weeks and we were away. We had this soft sand hill which had three trees on it.

“If a horse could only get to the first tree he wouldn’t cut it. If it could get to the 2nd tree he would win races and if he could get the 3rd and final tree he was a Group horse.”

It was as simple as that. The tradition has continued over the journey with Grant Williams and Adam Durant both working and learning their craft under the guidance of Lindsey Smith and the soft sand and those three trees.

But as Lindsey says: “the best Group 1 winner to ever come out of that soft sand hill was me, as I ended up marrying Rebecca and as they says the rest is history.”