![\"\"\/](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/garry_simms_sr_in_2011_with_flashy_lassie_his_first_graded-stakes_winner_in_the_grade_3_debutante_co.jpeg\")
Garry Simms Sr. in 2011 with Flashy Lassie, his first graded-stakes winner in the Grade 3 Debutante. Photo courtesy of Louisville Courier-Journal.<\/p>\nGarry Simms Sr. in 2011 with Flashy Lassie, his first graded-stakes winner in the Grade 3 Debutante. Photo courtesy of Louisville Courier-Journal.<\/p>\n
Moving tributes to former Kentucky-based trainer from the wrong side of the tracks fought a valiant 15-year battle with cancer. He died on Tuesday [July 15].<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
Former trainer Garry Simms Sr. went 15 rounds, toe-to-toe, with the blood cancer multiple myeloma after being told in 2010 that he had mere weeks to live. It took a sucker punch, in the form of multifocal pneumonia in both lungs, to end Simms\u2019 fight.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/simms-pic.jpg\")
With his family holding his hands, Simms died on Tuesday night [July 15], at Louisville\u2019s Norton Women\u2019s and Children\u2019s Hospital. He was 73.<\/p>\n
\u201cGarry Simms was not just a tough physical person,\u201d said Mike Reecer, a former horse owner and Simms\u2019 close friend since they attended Iroquois High School.<\/p>\n
\u201cMentally, he was the toughest person I\u2019ve ever seen. He just wouldn\u2019t quit. He\u2019d give you the thumbs up and say, \u2018Keep the faith.\u2019 He really did fight the good fight. He was an amazing man.<\/p>\n
\u201cEvery time he\u2019d get to feeling better and doing better, before they\u2019d find somewhere else, it was like he was getting a second chance and he wasn\u2019t going to waste it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Simms leaves twin legacies: how he fought an incurable cancer for a decade and a half and, before that, how in 2001 he turned his life around. He also was a heck of a horseman who made the most with fairly limited opportunities.<\/p>\n
\u2018One of the best trainers around with two-year-olds\u2019<\/p>\n
Trainer Barry King, a CPA who was a business associate as well as close friend, remembers the day \u2013 January 10, 2010 \u2013 when Simms received the brutal diagnosis.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe came in with tears in his eyes, and said, \u2018I\u2019m done. They give me two or three months,\u2019\u201d King said. \u201cThat was 15 years ago. Like I told him when he\u2019d go in for chemo and stuff, \u2018You\u2019re a hero to those people in chemo. Because you walk in there and you\u2019re that guy who was supposed to die after three months, and it\u2019s been 15 years.\u2019 He gave all those people hope.\u201d<\/p>\n
Simms already was regarded by many as the toughest guy on the Churchill Downs and Trackside Training Center backstretches\u00a0when he received his diagnosis. Still alive a year and a half after being advised to get his affairs in order, Simms embarked on the most successful stretch of his training career.<\/p>\n
![\"Garry](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/simms-2011-simms-at-his-churchill-downs-barn-in-2011-courtesy-the-louisville-courier-journal.jpg\")
That included winning his first graded stakes in 2011 with $4,000 purchase Flashy Lassie in Churchill Downs\u2019 G3 Debutante, followed the next year by sweeping the Debutante [$10,000 purchase Blueeyesintherein] and G3 Bashford Manor [Circle Unbroken, a $92,000 buy].<\/p>\n
Simms never paid a lot (comparatively speaking) for horses and never trained more than 15 or 16 at a time, said King, one of Simms\u2019s owners, including as a partner in his three graded-stakes winners, before becoming a trainer himself.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe was one of the best trainers around with two-year-olds,\u201d King said. \u201cHe had a good eye for a horse, a great eye.\u201d<\/p>\n
King\u2019s barn today includes a horse that Simms purchased as a weanling and that his owners named Big Garry.<\/p>\n
\u201cGarry knew what to buy,\u201d said Frank Miller, another trainer and longtime friend. \u201cA lot of times he\u2019d look for breeding that was first getting started, first-year sires, broodmares unproven on the track but they had good bloodlines.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe knew how to look at them, too, and then knew what to do with them once he got them. That\u2019s an art sadly fading out of our game.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2018He woke up and found God and didn\u2019t want to be who he was anymore\u2019<\/p>\n
Simms grew up in the rough and sometimes violent Iroquois housing projects in Louisville\u2019s South End, his dad dying when Garry was 19. He fell into an environment where fighting and drinking were an accepted part of life. All the same, those who knew him back then said the man always had a good heart and that you couldn\u2019t ask for a better friend.<\/p>\n
One day in 2001, Simms decided he was tired of being who he was. \u201cI hit my knees and asked God to help me,\u201d Simms said in a 2011 interview with the Louisville Courier-Journal.\u00a0\u201cAnd it\u2019s been 10 years since I\u2019ve had alcohol. I have turned it around.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"Garry](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/unnamed-13.jpg\")
The transformation and sobriety came long before the cancer.\u00a0Simms\u2019s friends say his hallmark became helping countless others battle addiction, especially those in Alcoholics Anonymous.<\/p>\n
\u201cA lot of people say he found God when he got sick,\u201d said his son Zack. \u201cHe didn\u2019t find God when he got sick. Dad found God when he got sober. I got to say it was July 28, 2001.\u201d<\/p>\n
Miller, a retired professional wrestler, said that when he was young,\u00a0the older Simms and his running mates tolerated him tagging along.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt wasn\u2019t like Garry was out looking for trouble,\u201d Miller said at Trackside Training Center. \u201cWe just had a knack for finding it at that time, and didn\u2019t back down. But Garry was a family man, a great guy, even in his wilder days.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe just kind of woke up one day and said, \u2018That\u2019s it.\u2019 He woke up and found God and didn\u2019t want to be who he was anymore.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cAt that time, he wasn\u2019t thinking of cancer killing him,\u201d Miller added. \u201cI remember him saying he wanted to see his grandkids\u2019 hair grow. He did more than that. To live 15 years after you\u2019re given weeks, he\u2019s the toughest S.O.B. I\u2019ve ever known. Both inside and outside. Garry could give you a lot of tough love. But you needed it. I learned a lot of life lessons from Garry.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2018What kind of man would I be if I quit fighting because it\u2019s difficult?\u2019<\/p>\n
Reecer recalls a conversation he had with Simms a couple of years ago. \u201cCancer runs in my family; fortunately I\u2019ve never gotten it,\u201d he said. \u201cBut I told Garry, \u2018I don\u2019t think I could do what you have done.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou get a treatment on the Monday and you feel like the devil until Friday, when you feel a little bit better. A little better Saturday and Sunday, until where you can enjoy yourself. Then you go back Monday and start the whole process over. I just don\u2019t know if I could do that, Garry.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u201cHe said, \u2018Mike, I love my family more than anything. What kind of man would I be if I quit fighting because it\u2019s difficult? I\u2019ll fight until my last breath. I got to walk my daughter down the aisle when she got married. Nobody thought I\u2019d be around to do that.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve seen three grandchildren born. I watched my kids grow up to be good young men, a good woman. My wife, I love her dearly.\u2019 He said, \u2018I\u2019m not done.\u2019\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI said, \u2018That\u2019s a good reason to keep fighting.\u2019 And I know he suffered, good gawd almighty. That\u2019s a long time to have stage 4 cancer. He has taken more chemo treatments and more radiation treatments than most bodies could stand.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"Garry](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/unnamed-14.jpg\")
Simms was a born entrepreneur, owning and operating a variety of businesses including The Cue Club pool hall when he was 25. Later he owned Double Down Sports Bar, concrete and trucking businesses, and at one stage had an operation hauling horses between tracks.<\/p>\n
\u201cDad\u2019s always been a jack of all trades,\u201d said Zack Simms. \u201cBefore he got sick, he would come to the barn in the morning, he\u2019d drive the dump truck, trailer and bobcat or skid loader into the barn, park it there over by the church or on the street.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019d do the horses, then he\u2019d leave and go do concrete all day until dark. He\u2019d come back the next morning with dump truck, trailer, bobcat. He did that for years. He had a passion for working.\u201d<\/p>\n
Simms got into training through the late Dianne Carpenter, serving as her assistant trainer until opening his own stable in late 1991. He won 248 races and more than $6.1 million in purse earnings before his\u00a0last starter on December 10, 2021, at Turfway Park. His best season came in 2012 with a career-high 22 victories from 84 starts.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Zack became an integral part of the stable, becoming his dad\u2019s assistant trainer and at times serving as the operation\u2019s trainer of record.<\/p>\n
Zack Simms, who today runs his own commercial concrete company, said his dad was never cancer-free but at times was in remission. Garry faced other health issues, however. That included having a heart attack and undergoing triple bypass surgery last year. The elder Simms was in the ICU at Norton so many times he might as well have had a standing reservation.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe had tumors he had to do radiation on, tumors on his spine, on his ribs,\u201d said Zack. \u201cThey did radiation on that, then it shrunk, then it came back and they\u2019d do it again.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe had pneumonia at the beginning of the year, had sepsis three times. Just all the radiation, chemo, bone-marrow transplants, he had to get kidney stents every six months. He never quit. Somebody said the other day \u2013 and I agree 1,000 percent \u2013 \u2018If it could have been beat, he would have beat it.\u2019 But it was God\u2019s time, and God said it\u2019s time to go home.\u201d<\/p>\n
Reecer said his friend did everything he could to beat back the inevitable, that if he felt up to doing a push-up, he wouldn\u2019t do just one.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019d do 10 of them,\u201d he said. \u201cHe just kept trying to keep his body strong. He\u2019d eat right. Of course he didn\u2019t drink, didn\u2019t smoke. But he did not ever get his strength back. After that bypass surgery, he got to feeling bad. He told me, \u2018I know this old stuff is back. I can tell.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u201cSure enough, it was \u2026 he had so many issues, his body was just wore out and beat up.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2018He gave quite a few a start, a chance, a lotta good!\u2019<\/p>\n
As the Simms family grieves, they take solace in how Garry Sr. inspired others.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve had hundreds of text messages over the last two days: \u2018Your dad saved my life.\u2019 \u2018He was like a father to me,\u2019\u201d Zack Simms said. \u201cSo many people have reached out and told me how special he was to them. I don\u2019t know how many \u2013 but a lot \u2013 have said, \u2018Your dad was my best friend.\u2019 He always saw the good in people.\u201d<\/p>\n
Zack pointed to a Facebook post by horsewoman Shannon Zuver that read, \u201cHe gave quite a few a start, a chance, a lotta good!!\u201d The post started with: \u201cTo have such a reputation as a badass, he sure hid it well, with all his love, laughter, kindness, and giving to others always. Real racetracker Hall of Fame.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Simms\u2019s other son Garry Jr. posted on Facebook: \u201cA fighter he was! He kicked cancer’s ass!\u201d<\/p>\n
Daughter Ashley Larson wrote: \u201cYour life was a true testimony of resilience and faith. I saw what faith of a mustard seed looks like bc I watched you live it. Fly high with the angels, Daddy, you are truly where you belong. You left an impact on this world \u2026\u00a0your last words to me were \u2018God\u2019s got it\u2019 and I know he has.\u201d![\"Garry](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/simms-with-trainer-greg-foley-at-churchill-downs-in-2011-courtesy-the-louisville-courier-journal.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
Zack wrote: \u201cWorking for him allowed me to learn a lot about horses, but more than anything I learned about life.\u201d<\/p>\n
Miller said he can\u2019t say if his longtime buddy ever truly felt good physically after developing cancer.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe felt good about who he was and where he was at, I\u2019ll say that,\u201d Miller said. \u201cMentally, and in his heart, he felt very good and happy where he was at \u2013 and the fact he was still here.\u201d<\/p>\n
Trainer Greg Foley and Simms became fast friends when Simms first got into horse racing. Foley says he was pretty much busted one winter many years ago\u00a0and, as Turfway Park\u2019s meet was ending, needed a way to get his horses to Louisville.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cGarry said, \u2018I\u2019ll come and get you. I\u2019ve got this old van,\u2019\u201d Foley said. \u201cHe did, got the horses on there. That thing broke down about halfway home, and he pulled over. I was following him. He got in there and got to tinkering with it and eventually got it back running. We finally made it back to Churchill. We always laughed about that. There are a million stories I could tell you.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m going to miss him. He was one of the good ones.\u201d<\/p>\n
Garry Simms Sr. is survived by wife Dianna, sons Garry Jr. and Zack Simms, daughter Ashley Larson, and granddaughters Kaelyn Whitehouse, Venice Larson, Allie Simms and Piper Simms. (Obituary)<\/a><\/p>\n \u2022 Visit the Kentucky HBPA website<\/a><\/p>\n D Wayne Lukas: farewell to a racing icon<\/a><\/p>\n Extraordinary season sees Hong Kong\u2019s champion horses shine on global stage<\/a><\/p>\n \u2018Barry Hills made a success of himself and of everything he worked so hard for\u2019 \u2013 reflections on a remarkable career<\/a><\/p>\n \u2022\u00a0View the latest TRC Global Rankings for horses \/<\/a>\u00a0jockeys \/<\/a>\u00a0trainers \/<\/a>\u00a0sires<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Garry Simms Sr. in 2011 with Flashy Lassie, his first graded-stakes winner in the Grade 3 Debutante. Photo…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":12017,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[3004,101,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-12016","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-racing","8":"tag-racing","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12016","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12016"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12016\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12017"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12016"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12016"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12016"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}