Ten years ago, when Stephanie Simpson was just two years into her career as a professional groom for Dominic and Jimmie Schramm, she told the Chronicle she still felt a bit out of place in the big leagues, as a kid from a dairy farm in Vermont grooming at a competition like the Kentucky Three-Day Event.
Today, Simpson is the barn manager and head groom for Olympic event rider Boyd Martin, overseeing his top-tier international program with nearly a dozen working students and staff and horses at all levels of training. Throughout the years, Simpson’s hard work and humor—along with her keen attention to detail and genuine love for the horses in her care—set her apart as a fixture in the sport.
But it was an unconventional path led Simpson from the family’s Vermont farm to a stable with horses and riders so famous they’re household names.
“I didn’t go right from college to here,” she said. “There was a huge learning curve coming from a tiny little town in the middle of nowhere to sport horses.”
With that learning curve came long days and lots of hard work. Simpson credits her family’s lifestyle for her work ethic and grit. “You have to farm because you love it,” she said. “It makes you tough.”
It was her advisor at the University of Vermont, where Simpson earned a degree in animal sciences, who first encouraged her to follow the pull of horses and seek out a working student position to get her feet wet. That led her to Pennsylvania, where she took her first job with eventer Jane Sleeper then moved to the Schramms, ultimately staying with them for four years as a groom and de facto barn manager.
In 2018 she received the phone call that would change her life. She was just finishing up a winter’s worth of work for Liz Halliday, driving Halliday’s rig back to Ocala from Kentucky, when that pivotal call … went to voice mail.
Boyd Martin knew that Simpson was between jobs, he said, and he needed a groom. Seven years later, Simpson still has the message saved on her phone.
“I’d always admired how hard she worked,” Martin said. “When she worked for Dom and Jimmie, she’d wake up at three o’clock in the morning to muck stalls for other riders, then babysit after her day was over. I saw that she was invested in her goals, and I was drawn to that.”
She took the position, and now she’s a regular at five-star events all over the world, having accompanied Martin to two Olympics and two world championships along the way.
“When she started here, I didn’t realize what an unbelievable impact she’d make on my career,” Martin said. “I knew she was good, but I didn’t realize she was going to be this good.”
At Windurra USA in Cochranville, Pennsylvania, home base for Martin and his wife, international dressage athlete Silva Martin, Simpson now leads a team of almost a dozen of what she calls “well-rounded horse people.”
“No one here is above doing anything,” Simpson said. “No one just shows up, rides horses, and goes home. Everybody mucks out, everybody does turnout. Everyone here learns to be observant about the horses.”
“I’m probably the worst person to talk to about balance. I don’t really take time off. But I’ve never felt a day where I didn’t want to go to work or thought, ‘I’d rather work at a bank.’ ”
Stephanie Simpson
Simpson’s daily routine at Windurra is generally the same: feeding, changing turn-outs, mucking stalls, then pairing up horses and riders according to Boyd’s training plans. She handles the majority of Boyd’s upper-level horses, often hacking them out to wherever he is on the farm, and ensures each day is running smoothly. Boyd said he’s come to rely on Simpson for her in-depth understanding of the program and its horses.
“I’m often bouncing ideas off her, or asking her training questions, or getting her opinion on what days we should gallop or what jumps to use,” Boyd said. “Sometimes I think she’s more knowledgeable of our horses than a lot of the vets out there. She’s the one trotting the horses out and evaluating their soundness or checking in with the blacksmiths. She’s always picking up on little things that need attention. She’s basically the manager of this whole production.”
Simpson’s attention to detail is still razor sharp at the end of the day when she’s wrapping legs, administering meds, feeding and shuffling around horses dependent on weather and season.
“Steph leads by example,” Boyd said. “She outworks everyone. She’s here before them. She leaves after them. She sets a very high standard, and that sort of quality is infectious. Everyone else just tries to keep up with her.”
Simpson’s weekdays at the farm start around 7 a.m. and usually wrap up about 12 hours later.
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“But I was at the barn until 10:30 p.m. last night,” she said, laughing. “And on the weekends [if there’s a show], I’m often rolling into the barn at 2 a.m. So I’m probably the worst person to talk to about balance. I don’t really take time off. But I’ve never felt a day where I didn’t want to go to work or thought, ‘I’d rather work at a bank.’ ”
“Steph leads by example. She outworks everyone. She’s here before them. She leaves after them. She sets a very high standard, and that sort of quality is infectious. Everyone else just tries to keep up with her.”
Boyd Martin
While days at Windurra may feel somewhat routine, her competition schedule with Boyd has been anything but. Ten years ago, Simpson told the Chronicle that her bucket list included grooming somewhere in Europe. Today, her position has taken her around the world, including trips two Olympic games (Tokyo 2020 and Paris 2024) and Italy for the 2022 FEI Eventing World Championship. She’s now a regular at events across Europe, calling Burghley her favorite.
“Those events weren’t even on my radar 10 years ago,” she said. “But I’m trying to live in the moment. Some days it’s hard to look around and appreciate where you are when you’re so caught up in the things that need done. In Paris last year, I was walking the course and stressing out about getting back to the barn. But then I looked up, and there was the Palace of Versailles. I have to consciously say, ‘Stop being an uptight psychopath and enjoy this moment!’ ”
Boyd remembers walking the cross-country course at the Paris Olympic and says it’s a favorite memory of his with Simpson.
“The moment was kind of surreal,” he said. “We’ve been to battle together, so many times. We’ve traveled the world with these amazing horses, and we’ve had some incredible results and some devastating, disappointing results. This sport has the highest of highs and the lowest of lows. But then, after thousands and thousands of hours of work you end up in amazing places like Versailles together, walking on the palace lawns.”
Simpson credits the sport and the horses themselves for keeping her humble.
“One weekend we’ll be at Kentucky five-star prize-giving,” she said, “and then the next we’re at a local horse trial getting screamed at by the parking guy because my trailer’s not at the exact angle that he wants. Horses can be humbling, and you have to have a sense of humor. Win or lose, big event or small, the day after a horse show is still just the day after a horse show, even if that show is in a really fancy place. The world is going to go on, no matter what happens.”
Ten years ago, Simpson said she wasn’t sure how long she’d continue as a groom.
“Oh, she was naïve!” Simpson said of her younger self.
“When you get started in this,” she continued, “You’re just fumbling around like an idiot, asking so many questions. Then somewhere, somehow, I became the person answering the questions. Sometimes I think, ‘How did I get here? Is this imposter syndrome?’ But now, when someone calls me, I do have the answer.”
“Back then I probably thought that grooming at the upper levels was so out of reach,” she continued. “But now, I look back at everything I’ve done, and I am the most experienced one. It just happens over time. I think you’re always just changing into new versions of yourself.”
But some things haven’t changed. A decade ago, she called herself “kind of a control freak”—and today says her desire to do things a certain way has “one hundred percent gotten worse” over the years. She’s also come to rely on some superstitions help her through stressful show days.
“I just start silently checking off all my psychotic stuff,” she said, laughing, “I like to put Boyd’s number in his pinny. If I’m doing studs or something, I always start with the left front. Like, it’s crippling if I can’t start with the left front. And at a big event, I like to do the tacking myself, even when we have multiples and I have to sprint from the finish line to the barn.”
“But I think there’s just a lot of pressure [at the big events],” she continued. “At the end of the day, I only have myself to blame if something’s gone awry. So instead of putting that pressure on some unsuspecting soul, I’d rather just keep it myself.”
“The weirdest quirk I find,” Boyd said, “is that Steph refuses to watch the horses go cross-country. I didn’t realize this until about four or five years in.”
Now, that superstition has become a bit of a running joke.
“It’s so nerve-wracking just before a cross-country round at a five-star,” Boyd said. “But just before I start, I’ll often say to her, ‘You gonna go watch?’ and it’s the only time we’ll crack a smile.”
“Eleven minutes on a cross-country course feels like two hours,” Simpson said. “I’m not watching that.”
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She just wants horse and human to gallop safely across the finish. Then, she can get back to work.
“I’m consumed by my job, but it doesn’t consume me, if that makes sense,” she said. “I enjoy it, so it doesn’t seem like work.”
More than anything else, Simpson adores being a part of the growth and success of the horses in her care.
“I was here when Muss Lulu Herself did her first beginner novice, and now she’s entered in a five-star,” Simpson said. “When the days go by and the years go by, to see what happens in your time, it’s pretty satisfying.”
And she treasures the relationships built with her four-legged teammates.
“I’ve traveled all over with Thomas and Bruno,” she said, referring to Boyd’s five-star partners Tsetserleg TSF and Fedarman B. “They’re like people. They have their things they like and things they don’t like. They have their unique personalities. You learn to understand how they think and how they move. If you’re in tune with them, it’s all just easier. And you can learn a lot about them if you just keep your eyes open.”
Boyd’s own eyes are open to Simpson’s vital role in his program.
“So many people come through the business, and the first time you meet them you don’t know if they’re going to stay for three days or three years,” he said. “But you come to recognize the people who are really, really invested and committed.
“There’s definitely, from my side, a huge feeling of respect,” he continued. “And I’m a little bit scared of her, too. There are a lot of people in my life now who just say yes, and she’s definitely not one of them. I respect that.”
“People have really high expectations when they think about working for Boyd Martin,” Simpson said, “like it’s going to be all chandeliers and brick pavers and riding around on five-star horses. That’s not it all. You don’t do it to be on Instagram.”
Perhaps not, but within Boyd’s professionally produced social media, Simpson has become a bit of a fourth-wall counterpoint, popping up to occasionally grouse about being filmed or taking a humorous dig at the social media crew who aren’t working quite the hours she is.
“We’re out here in the snow. We’re out here in the rain. We’re out here in the blazing sun. You have to be physically and mentally tough. I learned that from Boyd,” she said. “Some of my other friends who are grooms in smaller programs say they would never want my job. But I wouldn’t want theirs. I know I couldn’t do a five-horse program; I would go insane.”
“I think you kind of end up where you’re supposed to be,” she continued. “I don’t mind working my ass off because it’s important. It’s my career. It’s Boyd’s career. It’s the horse’s career. And I just love what I do.”
Do you know an exceptional groom who deserves to be showcased in our Groom Spotlight section? If so, email kloushin@coth.com to tell us all about that person.
