All in the family

Wayne Crompton has a long history with Thoroughbreds. Now partnered with OTT Double Impact, the pair are enjoying considerable success, writes AMANDA MAC.

Wayne Crompton grew up on a Thoroughbred stud owned by his uncle in Wyreema Queensland – so his relationship with the breed, and his respect for their ability, developed early. “There were no purpose bred or Warmblood horses then, so we jumped Thoroughbreds off the track. You’d go and try them and it went from there, it was just part of life,” he says.

Looking back, Wayne reckons he was “pretty spoiled” when it came to horses. “They were a bit of a family thing. My dad rode, so I learned to ride and then I went on to do what I did.” And for Wayne, that was show jumping. He rode in both Junior and Young Rider competitions before leaving the sport to become involved in the horse racing industry. After a stint working in the Hunter Valley, he met Jackie and the couple bred Thoroughbreds before turning their attention to training horses for the track. “It was never a full-time thing, we just had eight or ten in work and enjoyed what we did,” he explains.

The Cromptons were by then based on a property just outside of Toowoomba, Queensland, and were on the lookout for a talented youngster to train. Earmarked by Jackie as a promising candidate, they bought Double Impact, by Mossman (AUS) out of Cornish Moss (AUS), at the 2009 Magic Millions Yearling Sales. Affectionately known as Tiger, the horse, now a long time and much-loved Crompton family member, was trained by Jackie, and in a track career that included nine wins and sixteen placings delivered more than $500,000 in prize money.

After he’d quit jumping to focus on the racing industry, Wayne had to a great extent remained distanced from the competitive world of show jumping, a hiatus of some 20 plus years. He was, however, Vice-President of the Darling Downs Show Jumping Club, and on occasion Olympic equestrian Guy Creighton, a long-standing family friend, would lend Wayne a horse to take around a few 90cm events at small shows – but other than that, he had no real desire to get back into anything more serious.

But in 2018, Channel 7 aired the first Jump Off series, and watching it proved to be a be a real game changer for Wayne – it piqued his interest and held it. “I remember saying to Jackie that it wouldn’t be too hard to win the event,” Wayne recalls.

As it happened, Double Impact had retired from the track in the middle of that same year, and had been sent to get an education over jumps and cross-country fences with Guy’s daughter Gemma Creighton, a talented show jumper and a Queensland Off the Track Acknowledged Retrainer. Guy’s estimation of the horse’s ability was that although probably not suited to being a World Cup horse, he would likely be successful around smaller tracks.

However, Wayne still had Jump Off in the back of his mind. Knowing that after such a long break away from serious competition he was not yet ready, nor with a full-time job did he have the time, to campaign Double Impact himself, he’d mentioned the horse to old friend and Olympic equestrian Ron Easey, who offered to take him on his truck to try him out at a few shows. “I got a call from Ron to say he was going really well, so the plan was to get him qualified for the 2019 Jump Off series.”

Many kilometres and more than 30 shows later, Ron steered Double Impact to victory in a Jump Off qualifier in Nambour, and just two weeks later, took out Jump Off’s Just Raced event with a winner takes all prize purse of $50,000.

Because Wayne’s job often involves travel and doesn’t allow for much free time, he only competes Double Impact in amateur and off the track classes, an approach Ron Easey recommended and one that’s working well. High Impact’s sweet spot are the 1.10m to 1.20m events, Wayne tells me. “He’s very competitive at that, but he hasn’t reached his full potential mainly because he’s been held back by me. If he’d had another run with Ronnie, he could probably have been a Mini Prix horse or gone Grand Prix, but I don’t do enough of it. He’s very well looked after and he has a pretty good life really. As it is, he probably only does 15 or so shows a year,” Wayne laughs.

And one of those shows was the Queensland qualifying round for the 2025 Magic Millions Queensland Off-The-Track Cup. Held in July during the 2024 Festival of Show Jumping at the Queensland State Equestrian Centre, Wayne and Double Impact sailed into first place and will be competing on the Gold Coast early next year. One of 24 horse and rider combinations vying for a spot in the January Cup final (with only the top ten going through) he was the only horse to jump a double clear, with Gemma Creighton and Its Macewen in second place. Wayne had been focussed just on qualifying, and although he thought they’d be close to being in the top ten he was not expecting the first place slot, which came as a very pleasant surprise.

After a successful racing career, the now 16-year-old Double Impact continues to impress. “It’s good that he’s able to come back and jump the tracks at 1.20m – that he can still do that after all this time. I didn’t expect to be able to compete like that with him really,” Wayne says. Nevertheless, fifteen years after the Cromptons bought the horse as a yearling at the Magic Million Sales, he’ll be back to where it all started, this time to contest the Off-The-Track Cup.

Wayne is well aware of the value of OTT events in encouraging the rehoming of OTT horses, and would like there to be more competitions. “I’d really like to see additional classes that specifically target inexperienced amateur riders so that there’s an even greater incentive to own and compete on off the track horses,” he explains. “It must get a bit disheartening when the more experienced horses and riders are pretty much consistently winning the existing competitions. So, events designed to encourage less experienced riders and novice horses would quite probably increase the uptake of off the tracks from the retrainers, and that’s something that would benefit everyone involved, not least of all the horses.”