It is always an honour to chat with Billy Raymont. After so much success in the sport, he still manages to stay humble and find a way to be genuinely honest about both the difficulties and the rewards of what he is doing. Right now, what he is doing is remarkable by any measure: he has packed up his family, his horses, and his life, and taken them to Europe in pursuit of one of the sport’s great goals. The World Championships – this year to be held at the iconic venue of Aachen.

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Billy is no stranger to competition at World Championship level, after competing so well at Tryon in 2018 and Herning in 2022 and is currently based near the Peelbergen Equestrian Centre in the Netherlands, where he has found a quiet yard with his host Ciaran Dreeling after spending the earlier months of the trip with Yves Houtackers in Belgium close to the Dutch border. He arrived in Europe in late January, which was earlier than his previous campaign, and the decision to come early was deliberate. The horses he has brought with him, Caprino and Blue Balou, both hold their MERs, and giving them the time and competition they need to develop at the highest level required getting over as soon as possible. As Billy puts it, with two horses at that level, it became pretty obvious they should bring them to Europe and try to develop them further.

The campaign began with three weeks in Oliva, Spain, where the weather offered a more forgiving start than a northern European winter would have allowed. Those three weeks gave Billy a chance to put Blue Balou through his paces in consecutive two-star and three-star Grand Prix classes, something he was deliberate about even if it meant Caprino took a back seat at times. The mileage for Balou, as Billy calls him, was the priority. It was an investment in the younger horse’s education, and the weeks in Spain delivered exactly what he had hoped for.

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From Spain the campaign returned to Belgium, and it was not long before one of the standout moments of the trip arrived. Billy received a wild card entry to the five-star show at Fontainebleau, and the experience left him searching for words. He describes arriving at a 1.60m Grand Prix course that was, from the very first fence, built to a genuine 155. What makes Fontainebleau even more meaningful in the telling is that it was not just Billy’s story. He had originally only been permitted to enter two horses at the show, which left his wife Tess without a ride. Then, when Caprino used up his permitted starts across the earlier classes and a space opened in the Grand Prix, it was Blue Balou who stepped into it. That left Tulara Dakchiko available, and Tess took the ride. The image Billy paints of watching his wife walk out ahead of him to walk the course at a five-star show with their little girl Lainey in tow, is one of those moments that quietly stops you. He describes sending a Snapchat to friends and calling it a ‘pinch me feeling’. That phrase keeps coming back in conversation with Billy, and it says something about a man who has not lost his sense of wonder at where the sport has taken him.

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The decision for Tess to take over the ride on Tulara Dakchiko has since become a proper arrangement, and it has helped solve a practical problem that had been quietly complicating the campaign. Billy arrived in Europe with three horses at a similar level, but the structure of European shows means a rider can only start one horse in each class. Having three competitive horses was, in Billy’s own words, a bit of a problem. Now that Tess is riding Dakchiko, the starts are distributed more sensibly, and both of them are riding. He notes with some warmth that none of this was the original plan, but it is working out fantastically.

Getting into shows in Europe is a more complicated exercise than most Australian competitors would expect. Billy’s world ranking sits around 2,000, which means he is a long way from the automatic entry lists for three-star and five-star events. The top shows operate off world ranking lists, and they want the biggest names filling their arenas. What that means in practice is a lot of phone calls, a lot of emails, and a willingness to be ready at very short notice. An invitation for Eindhoven arrived on a Monday with the show starting on Wednesday. Everything had to be in place. Billy had to stay ready as though he might be going somewhere any given week, because sometimes, at a day’s notice, he was. 

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Billy speaks with honesty about the mental side. He is a self-described over-analyser, someone who lays awake at night replaying rounds and thinking through what he could have done differently. He acknowledges this is probably a downfall. At this level, he says, the horses need to be better, and he needs to let them be better rather than trying to manage or assist them through every question. One of the things he has taken from this trip is a clearer understanding of that: ride well, trust the fundamental training, and then let the horses do what they are capable of.

As for the World Championships and the possibility of Australian team selection, Billy is measured as he knows that there are a lot of great Aussie combinations in the running for a team spot. Coming up this weekend is the Nations Cup in Deauville which will be significant and Billy hopes to be part of that Nations Cup Team.

But even in the space where being part of the Australian team in Aachen team might not come together the way he hopes, Billy does not sound like someone who would regret this campaign. He talks about leaving Australia with the idea of conquering the world, and arriving in Europe to find that the focus shifts almost immediately to learning, to absorbing, to watching the best riders and thinking about what can be absorbed from them. The shows that he has had the opportunity to ride at are the sport at its finest, and Billy Raymont is right in the middle of it. Whatever happens in the next few weeks, he will come home with something that cannot be taken away.

You can hear more from Billy the on the All Clear Podcast:

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