The scheduling of Gore’s harness meeting on a Saturday, rather than during the week, is a helpful bonus for two junior drivers making their racetrack debuts tomorrow.
Kieran McNaught (25) and Ellie Barron (22) have juggled professional careers while making their way into the driving ranks, so had their first race day fallen on a week day it would have been even more hectic.
Barron is a recently graduated physiotherapist who also works at her father, Clark Barron’s, Rakauhauka stable. McNaught also works in the stable but spends most of his working week working as a resource management planner.
Like Barron, McNaught, too, has harness racing in his blood. His father, Kevin, is the chairman of the Southern Harness organisation and his grandfather is Gore trainer Russell Kerr, the brother of fellow Southland trainer Maurice.
"I spent quite a bit of time hanging around Maurice’s stable as a young fellow."
McNaught is keeping his nerves in check and is just excited to hit the track.
"I am excited to get out there. I am not a nervous sort of a person, but we will have to see have happens when I get out there on Saturday."
Barron is not feeling the pressure of adding to her family’s rich harness-racing legacy, which incudes having a father with more than 1000 driving wins to his name.
She, too, is just eager to get her career under way.
"I am pretty excited more than anything," she said.
The University of Otago graduate has had a lifelong passion for horses, though much of her interest was in riding horses, rather than training and driving them, until after she left school, she said.
Barron’s career in the sulky starts behind Mass Invasion, from her father’s stable, in race 9 at Gore tomorrow.
Before that, McNaught will drive Just Wish for Invercargill trainer Murray Brown in race 7.
