Simon Fairweather OAM is Australia’s greatest archer. He won the men’s individual gold medal at the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games and was subsequently named AIS Athlete of the Year. In the following year, Simon was awarded the Order of Australia, and was later named as one of the 25 AIS Best of the Best athletes.

In the course of his extensive sporting career, Simon competed in five successive Olympic Games, the 1990 and 1992 World Field Archery Championships (winning silver in 1990), and seven archery world championships, winning the title in 1991. He was also a member of the Australian archery team that won the 1999 World Indoor Archery Championships.

Simon was a scholarship holder at the AIS from 1998 to 2001 (and during the lead-up to the Athens 2004 Olympic Games) and worked as assistant archery coach from 2000 to 2002.

After moving out of sport in 2002, Simon put the skills he developed studying jewellery design at the University of South Australia (1994–97) to good use, establishing a gallery and studio complex in the NSW town of Bungendore, not far from Canberra.

Working with wood and cast metal, Simon produces a range of contemporary jewellery as well as products ranging from one-of-a-kind carvings to bespoke furniture fittings.

Simon is married to Jackie (nee Gallagher), who was the inaugural head coach of AIS Triathlon and is the only woman to have held both world triathlon and duathlon championship titles in the same year (1996).

Although Simon’s business is booming, he returned to coaching his sport in February 2009, as Archery Australia’s head coach.