August 22, 2026 
For nine months, Australian show jumper Jamie Winning-Kermond has chased a World Championship bid across three continents—while her two young sons, Hudson and Thomas, have tracked her progress from 10,000 miles away.
The 39-year-old mother of two has spent the bulk of the 2026 season on the road, campaigning the 12-year-old Warmblood mare Tulara Wat Colblensky (“Juno”) from Ocala to Wellington, on to the World Cup Final in Fort Worth, and finally to Aachen for the FEI Jumping World Championships. Apart from a few short trips home, she’s been away from her boys—aged five and eight—for roughly eight months total.
“I miss them a lot,” said an emotional Winning-Kermond after Wednesday’s opening speed class where a single rail down slotted her into 88th out of 145 starters.
Her championship run ended on a high note Thursday, when Juno jumped clear in the challenging second team and individual competition, adding just one time-fault to their score to move up to 62nd place individually, just outside the top 60 qualifying cut. Australia also missed the Team Final cut, finishing 15th.
“She handled the atmosphere at the World Cup Final in the indoor, handles Aachen. I think she’d go anywhere and jump anything for anyone. She’s just one of a kind horse. I can’t thank the owners Rachel and Lynn Peel enough for letting me be the one to ride her.”
For Winning-Kermond, the past week in Aachen was the realization of a dream decades in the making—”It’s been a lifelong dream to get to a World Championship, and we finally made it, and it was at Aachen.” And while her two boys were at home, they were on her heart as she sent them a “massive hello” via the international press corps from the mixed media zone.
“Apart from a few trips home here and there, it’s probably a total of eight weeks at home that they’ve been without Mum [this year], so I miss them a lot,” Winning-Kermond said.
“My husband [Jamie Kermond] is very good, and we have a fantastic group of people at home, but leading the charge is [Team Manager] Maddo Robertson. Without Maddo, I wouldn’t be able to be here and doing this.
“A huge shout-out to Maddo and the rest of all of our family and friends at home that are doing their bit for my kids, so that I can come here and see out a dream that I had from eight years old at Pony Club.”
Life on the road, Winning-Kermond says, is a bit of an inevitability for Australian riders hoping to pursue the sport at the highest echelon—especially in her situation, where both she and her husband now compete at the championship level.
“We’ve lived here [in Europe] before, my husband and I, and my husband has been to three [FEI World Equestrian Games]—two FEI World Cup Finals. We’ve been overseas and gone back. I think it’s important to have an understanding of the different levels of sport,” she explained.
“I don’t think you need to live in Europe, provided you have an understanding and plan to be here nine to 12 months leading up to [a championship.] But that’s my opinion, everyone’s different.”
With Aachen now in the rearview, Winning-Kermond has just one big goal left from the FEI World Championships.
“It’s been long time away from [my boys].” she said. “I come home next week, and I’m really excited about that.”
