The Wairio Trotting Club hold their annual Ladies One Mile Day at Central Southland Raceway in Winton this Saturday.
Each race on the programme will be a fast paced one mile contest. The first race is scheduled for 12 noon and admission will be free. Feature races include the Ladyship Stakes Final, a Free-For-All Mobile Pace plus the first of four heats of a new Southern Fillies & Mares Series which will culminate in a final.
The club will run its very popular Prizes In Purses competition throughout the day. Ladies can drop their losing tote tickets with their name and contact number into a bucket on course from which draws are made throughout the day. The winning lady on each occasion then comes to the birdcage, chooses a handbag and receives the prize that the bag contains. It could not be easier to win. Participants have to be over 18 however to enter.
This year Ladies Day will acknowledge Ellie Barron. Ellie was scheduled to be honoured last year but Alert Level restrictions meant that with no crowds permitted on the course the club could not do so.
Ellie is a personality who has made a tremendous impact on the sport in a very short time. There was never any doubt Ellie would become involved in the sport with her father Clark driving and training and mother Jackie very involved in the operation as well.
She initially became involved in the equestrian world but helped clean the horse boxes at home on weekends.
“Then I started helping gearing up and the like and started working towards my Junior Licence. I graduated from school in 2012 and spent the next four years at uni fulltime and I would come home and drive in workouts and trials,” says Ellie.
“I enjoyed it and I wasn’t terrible at it so I went part-time for 6 months driving and working as a physio but it was just too hard to do both.”
Ellie won the NZ Cadet of the Year Award in 2018 and the Southland Junior Driver Premiership in 2019 and another highlight was getting the call up to New Zealand Junior Championships in 2019.
As well as success on the track Ellie is a Team Teal Ambassador and has been a huge force in the fundraising effort in the south which sees the proceeds go to the Women’s Cancer Foundation for Ovarian Cancer Research.
Ellie also came into the spotlight at Omakau early last year when Ricky May suffered his medical event in the sulky during the running of the Central Otago Cup. Ellie was one of the first on the scene and her efforts are credited with ensuring the successful outcome.
