'Women can compete on an equal footing with men'

The veteran female driver upstaged her male counterparts en route to capturing double heat honours in the sulky of a horse making its first appearance at the race track in three-years.

Westerfield, the first female driver to win the coveted Champion of Champions, managed to get both legs out of the 1:13-1:15 time bar with Nick DeCosta’s Brona’s Blaze during last Friday night’s racing.

She will now compete in the faster 1:10/4-1:12/4 time bar when racing resumes at Vesey Street.

Last week’s dominant display achieved in trying track conditions ended a long barren spell for the 35-year old driver, who turned the sport on its head after winning the Champion of Champions as a teenager.

Westerfield said: “It was a lot of fun. The track was good even though we had rain. Brona’s Blaze is a very strong horse and this was actually his first time racing after being laid off for quite some time.

“He raced both heats in pretty fast times and we’ve actually moved out of the time bar.

“We are going to move up to a faster time bar and hopefully we can do as good in that one as well. He’s a great pony, he’s like a Mack Truck.”

As for thriving in a male dominated sport, Westerfield added: “There is no difference really because a woman can do just as well as a man.

Encouraging

“There are mostly men in harness racing but us women can do it just as good.

“To be honest, it’s the horse that does most of the work really, we just drive them.”

Westerfield, one of a handful of female harness drivers, is encouraged to see more women gradually taking to the sport.

She added: “It’s definitely encouraging to see more women coming into the sport. Men always think they are better than us, but it has already been proven that is not always the case.”

Perhaps reinforcing the veteran driver’s argument was Katrina Sims’ record-breaking exploits at Vesey Street two-years ago when the latter established the track record (1:03).

Colin Mello and Robert Lopes’ Big Red Machine recently broke Sims’ track record.

If it was any consolation for the male harness drivers, Mark Richardson clocked last week's fastest time (1:04) in the sulky of Eddie Roque’s GV Crystal Ball in the Free for All.

It was the second straight week that Roque’s horse has held the distinction, having run a career-best 1:03/1 during the previous round of racing. n n Photo by Ras Mykkal

Women like Samantha Hayward, front, and Andrea Westerfield, back, can do just as well as men in harness pony racing says Westerfield.