Young driver on track for success

TAYLA French is still finding out what being a champion means.

The 25-year-old former Heathcote resident took out the recent Haras des Trotteurs Australasian Young Drivers Championship during Inter Dominion grand final week.

“It was actually a pretty surreal feeling, I didn’t realise how big it was until after the race,” she said.

“There’s still people congratulating me and just bringing up how good it was to win. Once a race is generally won, you wake up the next day and the race is over.

“But for this to keep going a few weeks on, it’s obviously a big success.

“I’ve got my personalised silks that I wore in the series and I’ll be able to look at them and remember what they were for, it’s a great feeling.”

French had a late start into harness racing

“I was always involved in the sport since I was kid, with dad training horses, but I don’t think I sat in the sulky until I was 21,” she said.

“It sort of went from there-got my racing licence and it’s been all guns blazing ever since.”

French’s career has been so successful that she’s lost track of how many wins she’s had.

“Low 200s, maybe 215,” she said.

At the end of 2021 she had a group one win with Parisian Artiste in the Victorian Super Series Final in Melton and she has her eye on another.

“It’s obviously a day-to-day sport,” she said. “You don’t know what you’re going to get until you hit the finish line but obviously to win another group one would be a dream.

“You know there’s a fair share of drivers that haven’t won group ones and I did it when I was 23 years old so that’s pretty exciting.”

French and her partner Alex Ashwood have set up a horse training business, Ashwood Training, and are currently operating out of Bendigo.

“We’re establishing a property between Axedale and Knowsley and as soon as it’s complete we’ll make the move out there,” she said.

“We’ve got about 20 horses here at the moment, but we’ll expand once we get out to the farm.”

Three-year-old filly Fernwood Miracle is one of them.

“She hasn’t won a race yet, she’s only just turned three,” French said. “She’s one of the horses we own the majority of.”

French’s father, Terry, is still training horses in Heathcote and she often comes back to help, and to share their mutual passion for harness racing.

“He’s done it all the time as a hobby,” she said.

“When he sold his business a few years back he got a bit more involved in it, and with me driving it’s probably given him a bit more incentive to do it a lot more often.”