Sally Simmonds: Horses, Heart, and the Long Road Home

Australian Jumping

Growing up on 60 acres on the Darling River at Bourke NSW, Sally Simmonds was never far from a horse. Long before she was winning national titles or dreaming of international stages, she was being led around her family’s caravan park on a pony, learning to ride on young breakers her father had broken in, and turning up to pony club in a small bush town that somehow managed to draw more than 200 kids every weekend. It was a childhood shaped by love, and a family that never seemed to slow down, and it gave Sally a foundation that has carried her through everything that has followed.

Sally’s parents came from a rodeoing background, her mother in breakaway roping and barrel racing, her father in saddle bronc riding. By the time Sally and her siblings came along, the rodeo days were behind them, replaced by the business of running Kidman’s Camp, a motel and caravan park in Bourke. But the horses never left. What the family lacked in perfectly schooled ponies, they made up for in resourcefulness and boldness. “Everything we rode as young kids were all breakers that dad had broken in,” Sally recalls. “So we learned from a young age how to ride a young horse.” That education, unconventional as it was, turned out to be a remarkable one. Her older sister Kayla, her brother Clay, and Sally herself grew up competing hard against one another, each one pushing the others to be better. “It was winner’s mindset all the time,” she says. “All we did was try and beat each other and be better than each other, which was amazing.”

Jumping, funnily enough, was not love at first sight for Sally. At pony club she was regularly deposited over the front of her pony and had little enthusiasm for it as a result. What changed everything was a horse. Her father found a young gelding, Willow, when he was looking for a horse for Kayla. Nobody in the family knew much about breeding at the time, but her mother had liked the type of the horse, thought he was athletic and a nice sort. Willow turned out to be by Balou du Rouet and out of an Appaloosa mare, a combination that produced a remarkable Young Rider horse for Kayla. Watching what a good horse could do shifted something in Sally. She started getting taken along to jumping shows, found herself a small Appaloosa called Chino who could jump metre-fives and metre-tens comfortably, and gradually the sport took hold. When her sister began attending World Cup shows with Jen Wood and came home telling the family they had to see these bigger events, the direction of travel became clear. Their father drove them to Tamworth and then on to shows around Sydney, and from that point, Sally says simply, it was game on.

Her early development as a competitive rider was guided by Janelle Waters from Dubbo, who coached her through pony club and opened the door to clinics with Gavin Chester. The first time Sally rode with Gavin she was about eight years old, and by her own admission she was still getting flung off and struggling to sit up over jumps. But the sport kept revealing more of itself, and with each passing year she grew more capable and more committed. A young warmblood sourced from Carlene Barton in Wellington gave her a horse she could push to Grand Prix level, with Gavin steering her in the right direction. Then came Oaks Chiffley, a horse she describes as her first really competitive mount who eventually became the horse on which Sally built her most formative competitive years as a junior.

Above: Sally Simmonds and Oaks Chiffley at the 2029 Australian Jumping Championships at Boneo Park

Sally had been trying for three years to win the Australian Junior Championship when it finally came together in 2019. Oaks Chiffley was her champion, and her other horse Chio MS was runner-up. It was the kind of result that felt bigger than a single result, the confirmation of years of hard work, long drives, and a family that had backed her every step of the way. She was coaching with Gavin, riding a horse bred by Chacco Blue that she describes as a dream horse, jumping Juniors in the morning and then going to help her brother Clay prepare for World Cup classes in the afternoon. “It was just like my dream come true,” she says. The pressure was real, but it was the kind of pressure that a family steeped in competition had prepared her for. “Being around that sort of mindset, made you very comfortable with it, but also like you’re a loaded gun, you’re ready to go.” Sally says.

Gavin’s influence on Sally as a rider went beyond the technical. The advice she carries most clearly from those years is straightforward and direct: you’ve done the work, be confident, go and do your job, don’t think, just do it, get it done. It is the kind of philosophy that holds up well under pressure, and it has continued to serve her. But another piece of advice from Gavin would come later, at a moment when Sally needed it most, and it would point her in a direction she hadn’t expected.

In 2022, Sally’s father passed away after a long illness with a rare liver disease. He had been a central figure in her riding life, a man she describes with quiet reverence: no-quit mentality, anything’s possible, a smile that could light up any room, the kind of person who made you feel confident just by being beside him. Losing him reshaped the way she thought about the sport and about life more broadly. “Since losing dad, it’s really made me take a step back and appreciate life itself and that there is so much more than jumping poles,” she says. “You’ve got to really step back and take a look at things and be very grateful for the life you have.”

In the months after her father’s death, Sally rang Hilary Scott out of the blue and asked if she could come and stay for a couple of weeks, needing to get away and clear her head. What was meant to be a short visit turned into something far larger. Hilary was accepted into Rome 5*, then St Gallen 5*, then Aachen, and she invited Sally to stay and come along. “I can’t thank Hilary enough for having me along for that,” Sally says. She came home energised, put together a team of young horses, found truck drivers where she could, and eventually made her way down to Gavin’s place in Victoria where she stayed for around eight months. Oaks Charleville was going well, she put a couple of World Cups on him, and the momentum was building. Then Gavin said something to her that she has never forgotten. “Sal, these horses are going great and you’re having a good time, but it’ll always be here. You need to live your life a little bit.” She took his advice. She went home, worked for a while, travelled and gave herself a genuine break.

The timing turned out to be fortunate in more ways than one, because the young horses she had at that point could be put out and brought back in without losing ground. Those same horses are now eight and nine-year-olds, and Sally’s excitement about what lies ahead with them is palpable. Her current team includes three mares, a Diamant de Semilly Chacco Blue mare, a Chacco Blue Lux Z mare, and a Comme il Faut Cassini I mare, as well as a stallion by Diamant de Semilly out of Balou du Rouet who received lifetime stallion approval in Europe. Her father had hand-picked all four of these horses in Europe as foals out of foal auctions, and one of the mares is the last horse he ever started. “It’s just unbelievable,” she says. “It’s so special because dad picked all four of these horses.” When she trains at home, she still hears him. She wonders what he would say, imagines how excited he would be, hopes he would be proud. “He’d be jumping inside out at these horses,” she says.

Alongside preparing these horses for competition, Sally has recently taken on a role handling the business side of sales for Oaks Sport Horses, working with Alice Cameron which she is really enjoying.

Sally would still love to take horses overseas, compete at big shows, get at least one horse to the top level. The Olympic dream, she says, is still there. “The flame has not died yet.”

As for advice to her younger self, she keeps it simple. Take it all in a little more, appreciate it a little more, capture it while it’s there. Those junior days were something else, she says, and they went faster than she ever realised. Now, with a team of horses her father chose, a career he helped shape, and a quiet resolve he helped build, Sally Simmonds is back on the road.

You can listen to the full interview with Sally on Episode 45 of the ‘All Clear’ Podcast foravailable on YouTube, Spotify and Apple Podcasts.

Sally Simmonds: Horses, Heart, and the Long Road Home

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