Horses for courses: Susie O’Neill’s passion for changing kids’ lives

Tour d’Horse is a wonderful name. Who came up with that?

I came up with a name after watching Tour de Cure one morning. We used to do bike rides and because everybody was starting to do bike rides, I decided that I needed to do something different. Because KIDS Foundation is doing so much with retired racehorses, I came up with the idea of Tour d’Horse, a race of walking pace and doing an event over a couple of hundred kilometres.

When and why was Tour d’Horse founded?

Sadly, in 2021, I lost my granddaughter. Her older sister asked her mum and myself to go for a ride, and the healing we got on the horse in that one hour was remarkable, so we introduced it into the KIDS Foundation recovery program. And then one day I was talking to Hamish [Hamish McLachlan, sports broadcaster and KIDS board member] and I said, “Look, I want to do this idea. What do you think?” He said, “Well, seeing you are using retired racehorses, why don’t you consider going out to the studs and the trainers and see if they’ll get involved?” The rest is history. Now it’s one of the biggest events outside the actual horse racing that all the studs and the trainers are involved in.

And what exactly is the event? It seems that the idea is to win by being slow. What is the message?

The race is at walking pace because it allows the rider to really reflect and connect with the horse. That human–horse connection is very special. But it also reminds the riders of the healing journey that the young people go through. When the young people are connecting in our equine-assisted learning programs, they’re connecting with the horses in their recovery journey. The riders get to meet the young people that they’re riding for, and then they can reflect on that while they’re riding in magnificent countryside, which is in the Upper Hunter at Belltrees, the property of the White family, who have been amazing and accommodating. The scenery is iconic.

The competition is that you don’t trot. For the last 100 metres of the event each day, it has a start and a finish and it’s the first one to the finish line that doesn’t break into a trot. It does cause a little bit of competition, and we do have a lot of people that do break into trots.

Who is involved and where is it running?

We have 27 teams involved and they include the racing industry and some wonderful celebrities. It’s running in the Upper Hunter Valley at Belltrees, just outside of Gundy, which is 15 kilometres from Scone, the horse capital of Australia.

You have a very personal connection to the cause.

I started the KIDS Foundation 33 years ago. I was a teacher and I worked in a kindergarten. We used to take our young people to “adopt a grandparent” at the local aged care centre and there we found some young people actually sleeping in wards with elderly residents. My husband and I raised the money to open the first rehabilitation unit in regional Victoria and that still exists today with 650 children using it either as overnight or day therapies.

What does Kids Foundation do and how is the money raised used?

KIDS Foundation was established to support children impacted by the most horrific accidents – acts of cruelty, burns, disabling health conditions. We help them rebuild their lives of strength, purpose and identity, and connection through transformational journey and education programs. The foundation’s recovery and education programs now reach up to 400,000 Australian children each year.

The money that Tour d’Horse raises will be used to fund these programs and particularly the programs that are associated with our equine assisted learning program. But the money raised is 50 per cent of all the money we need to raise for the KIDS Foundation. Last year we raised over $1 million and that is half what we need to run the KIDS Foundation for a year and reach between 300,000 and 400,000 children.

What was your career background before running KIDS Foundation?

I was a teacher – both primary and kindergarten – and as I mentioned before I took the children to an aged care centre, which is how KIDS Foundation started. I went on to do a PhD at Monash on developing safety risk intelligence in children.

What do you hope to achieve with Tour d’Horse?

I hope to achieve an iconic event that becomes a bucket list event, that people connected with horses want to be part of, but, most importantly, to make it a reciprocal giving program where we give back to the community that have donated to us. For all the people that have raised the money, we look to give back to them in another way so it’s not just life changing for our people but life changing for them.

Are you happy with the impact achieved so far by the foundation?

I think what we’ve been able to achieve surpasses anything that I could have believed.

I set some really high goals when we started KIDS Foundation many years ago. Because the foundation not only has the recovery program, but it has the education program, we have a program that is now in 10,000 kindergartens and preschools throughout Australia, and up to 400,000 children receive resources from the KIDS Foundation.

In 2020, we printed 465,000 books that went out to children and this year we’ve just done a print run of 250,000. These are books that will be directly given to children and probably read by many more, so the reach is far greater than we could have imagined.

I think, most importantly, it’s the people that are behind the foundation. You can’t do these things without an amazing team behind you and we’ve certainly got that. They are so driven, they’re passionate, they’re committed and I don’t think we would be where we are today if we didn’t have those sorts of people. We attract really special people and they give tenfold.

What will be the highlight of this year’s tour?

I think the highlight of the tour will definitely be the people and the horses that connect. Some of the riders we have are the everyday riders that have really worked hard to raise up to $60,000 to $80,000 to support the KIDS Foundation. We’re in a year that is really difficult for everybody, but to see these people just put their hand up and keep trying for us is incredible. So, I’m really wanting to thank just the everyday people. We’ve got some wonderful celebrities this year, such as Emma and Tom Hawkins, champion jockeys Rachel King, Melboune Cup winner Jamie Melham and Ben Melham, as well as actor and singer Tom Burlinson, and Olympic equestrian Amanda Ross. We’re looking forward to hearing James Johnston perform and actually sing with the children before his world tour. We have two young girls that are beautiful singers. I think there are going to be lots of highlights but it’s all about people and horses.

What is the most famous racehorse you’ve had involved in Tour d’Horse?

Makybe Diva is the most famous racehorse that we’ve been involved with. That came about by a really unexpected situation where in 2021 we sadly had our office broken into and all of our possessions stolen, including laptops, computers, lawnmowers, coffee machines, you name it. Neil Mitchell did a story on 3AW and Tony Santic happened to hear that story and he phoned in and donated $10,000.

Later, I went to thank Tony for the donation he made and just explained the impact that it had. I asked whether he would consider whether Makybe Diva could be our equine ambassador. He agreed, and now he’s donated a life size mould of Makybe Diva and we’re going to be doing lots of things in memory and in honour of Makybe because she was pretty special to our people. We got to go to Tony’s place where he put on a barbecue with Makybe Diva on the back lawn, and we were really looking forward to our pizza night this year but sadly Makybe passed away. It was very heartbreaking for us all, let alone Tony. It was devastating.

The next one is Eleven Eleven. We reached out to some of the trainers for a horse that was just recently coming off the track and this horse came off the track in February 2023. When he came off the track he had won Magic Millions three times. He raised $3.23 million and then when they told us his name was Eleven Eleven, my granddaughter passed away at 11.11 am and that was sort of the reason why Tour d’Horse and horses even exist in the KIDS Foundation world.

More information

The Tour d'Horse website is here