TAYLA French is still finding out what being a champion means.<\/p>\n
The 25-year-old former Heathcote resident took out the recent Haras des Trotteurs Australasian Young Drivers Championship during Inter Dominion grand final week.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was actually a pretty surreal feeling, I didn’t realise how big it was until after the race,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere’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.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut for this to keep going a few weeks on, it’s obviously a big success.<\/p>\n
\u201cI’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.\u201d<\/p>\n
French had a late start into harness racing<\/p>\n
\u201cI 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,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt sort of went from there-got my racing licence and it’s been all guns blazing ever since.\u201d<\/p>\n
French\u2019s career has been so successful that she\u2019s lost track of how many wins she\u2019s had.<\/p>\n
\u201cLow 200s, maybe 215,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt’s obviously a day-to-day sport,\u201d she said. \u201cYou 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.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou 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.\u201d<\/p>\n
French and her partner Alex Ashwood have set up a horse training business, Ashwood Training, and are currently operating out of Bendigo.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re establishing a property between Axedale and Knowsley and as soon as it’s complete we’ll make the move out there,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe’ve got about 20 horses here at the moment, but we’ll expand once we get out to the farm.\u201d<\/p>\n
Three-year-old filly Fernwood Miracle is one of them.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe hasn’t won a race yet, she’s only just turned three,\u201d French said. \u201cShe’s one of the horses we own the majority of.\u201d<\/p>\n
French\u2019s father, Terry, is still training horses in Heathcote and she often comes back to help, and to share their mutual passion for harness racing.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe’s done it all the time as a hobby,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen 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.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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. \u201cIt was actually a pretty surreal feeling, I didn’t realise how big it was until after the race,\u201d she said. \u201cThere’s still […]<\/p>\n