Since she was a child running around her uncle’s trotting stables at Bankstown, Kim has developed a strong love and passion for horses. Through her early teenage years Kim’s love of horse riding resulted in many blue ribbons and trophies at the Bankstown Pony Club and local shows. But the idea of working within the harness racing industry was always in the back of her mind and so she commenced working with legend harness racing trainer, Charlie Parsons.

Her time with Parsons at Bankstown was instrumental in developing her hands-on horse skills and to this day she talks fondly of the man. “The skills I learnt from Charlie prepared me perfectly for a career in training,” said Kim. “We always had 20-30 horses in work and I would work from sun-up to sun-down doing everything from shoeing to training and driving in races.

“In the harness racing industry we tend to be much more hands-on than the thoroughbred industry,” continued Kim. “Most stables could not afford to pay for extras such as more staff so we would just keep working and doing the job ourselves”.

Kim’s stellar Harness Racing career resulted in many success stories. In fact, she was NSW’s number one female driver in the early 80s and represented the State in the Annual Australian Drivers competition. Kim drove more than 100 winners including winning doubles and trebles at Harold Park, Harness Racing headquarters in Sydney.

Most Harness Racing fans will say that Kim cut short a promising driving career when she decided to venture into the thoroughbred industry. “I was not happy with the low prizemoney levels in harness racing and I was struggling to get ahead financially even though I was driving plenty of winners,” said Kim. “I liked the excitement of the gallops and of course the higher money on offer was enticing enough for me to change codes.”

For the first couple of years Kim enjoyed a dual licence training both pacers and gallopers but eventually she gave the standardbreds away to concentrate on the thoroughbreds.

Kim’s first major thoroughbred success was with Never True who took out the South Grafton Cup in 1991. Many winners have rolled on since then including a Doomben Classic with Enforced, Grafton Cup with the injury plagued Catapult and many city winners – recent winners include Magic Feather, Sir Craiglee, Con’s Amy, Mahtoum, Delago Star, Harrykay, Mr Gilly and Kimillsy.

Today, Kim has firmly established herself as a horse trainer of the modern era with a superb training complex at Wyong enjoying the best of all facilities.

“Basically, I live, work and breathe my horses,” said Kim. I have a very hands-on approach with the horses, which I feel is a big advantage compared to a lot of the bigger racing stables.”