Breakout year for Stacie

It was a breakout year in 2021 for Sawyers Gully harness racing trainer Stacie Elliott.

A regular at Newcastle, Maitland and Tamworth, Elliott provides numerous horses for those venues and from time to time travels further afield to tracks like Penrith and Dubbo.

And her hard work is paying off with her 2021 statistics of 32 wins and a whopping 109 placings from 695 starters being by far her best result yet.

“We only train a team of 22 horses, but we were able to pick up new stock throughout the year and some new clients as well which definitely contributed to the success our stable enjoyed throughout the year,” said Elliott.

“I get a lot of help from our regular stable driver Bevan Pringle, he is awesome and my daughter Kaitlyn, who has just turned 14, was recently granted her stablehand’s license, enabling her to do more around the stables, which is great.

“One thing I think we do well is travel our horses to find the most suitable races for them and we have been known to spend many hours on the road.

“But I guess that is just part of it.”

By her standards, Elliott will make the short trip into the Newcastle International Paceway tonight where she has nine horses engaged on an eight-race program. Click here to view the fields.

“My horses are fit and ready to go and with luck, all of them will be thereabouts,” said the Hunter Valley trainer.

“I have three horses in the first race, and I find it hard to split them.

“Sultan Fella has drawn perfectly in gate one and will benefit from having Tom Ison on board.

“He is a horse that likes to race up on the speed and from the inside on the front row he should be able to do that and be hard to hold out.

“But I do think my other two runners, Roll With Annie and To Infinitynbeyond will be running on.

“Later in the night I thought that Nifty Studleigh was in a winnable race.

“He is down in grade compared to the class of horse he has been racing against and I have been happy with him at home this week, so everything points towards him being hard to beat.

“I am so proud of what our stable achieved last year, and we are looking forward to another big season.”

By Michael Dumesny for HRNSW