Success for couple at the heart of thriving trots community

Harness racing might have come to Leon Fanning and Andrea O’Gorman by chance, but the Charlton couple now sit at the centre of one of the most passionate country racing communities in Victoria.

Fanning had no background in the sport before a group of mates turned “footy and pub talk” into reality more than 30 years ago and bought shares in a three-year-old pacer called Imprimartar (Entrepreneur).

Trained locally by part-owner Joey Thompson, the youngster made an immediate impact, winning his first six starts, then a Sires Stakes heat and running third in the 1990 Victorian final.

“Then we took him to Harold Park for the heats of the NSW Derby a month or so later. We had my old HQ Holden, towed a borrowed horse float, and we had enough money for petrol, a night at a motel, and a bit of punting money!” Fanning recalled.

“Once we’d paid the motel and finished backing the horse, we thought – we thought – we had just enough money left for petrol to get home!

“He won, and we won enough to stay up there for the two weeks til the final, and he won that. It was a pretty good time!”

The adventure sealed Fanning’s love of the sport, and after years helping Thompson, he eventually took out a licence to train one or two horses himself at Thompson’s Bushy Lodge.

O’Gorman’s path into the industry was no less unexpected.

“I grew up at Yarra Glen, so there were trots there and gallops. My brothers both had horses and one worked with the Hylands racing stable,” O’Gorman said.

“But I only got into harness racing after I moved to Charlton and met Leon – he gave me a share in a horse he had called Bushy Oak (Sports Town). The first start he had as a three-year-old he won.

“It was my first win as an owner and Leon’s first win as a trainer!”

Now president of the Charlton Harness Racing Club and the Charlton Harness Racing Training Centre, O’Gorman is part of a grassroots community that has built something remarkable.

Harness racing in Charlton is community at its best: the club rallied, fundraised, built partnerships and put in shovel work to build its training centre, and the results are flowing.

“We’ve got a great group of young trainers based here – Tori Hutchins and Luke Dunne; Michael Gadsden and Emily Wombwell; and Zac Steenhuis and Brittany O’Brien,” O’Gorman said.

“There are around 70 horses trained at the complex and in the town itself – probably around 100 if you count our surrounding communities like St Arnaud. We’ve had 70 winners this year from Charlton – our best year ever, I think.

“It’s good for the town and getting people involved and engaged. So many people are watching the trots now to see how the locals are going and even Leon’s copping it in the pub now for his ‘picket fence’ over the last couple of weeks,” she laughed.

Fanning has enjoyed back-to-back training successes with Fair Chance (Always B Miki), a mare bred by O’Gorman. The wins at Melton (July 25) and Charlton (Aug 11) gave Fanning his first training victories in six years.

“Joey (Thompson) has mostly trained ours, and he did a great job with her, but he’s not that well at the minute, so I took her back to training myself for a while,” Fanning said.

“(Fair Chance) won one race at three and one at four, but she’s always been a bit inconsistent. She’s an Always B Miki out of a Holmes Hanover mare and they always seem to go a bit later, but she’s won two as a five-year-old with more maturity on her side.

“She’s feeling good and we’ve changed tactics a little bit with her because it seems to suit her better to come with one run at them. She can sustain a fairly long sprint and run 27 or 28 second quarters for 600 to 800 metres now and she’s gaining confidence.

“Hopefully she will win a couple more yet. Her last win was in 1.56, and her win at Melton was her gutsiest where she almost got headed in the straight but kept whacking away and held on.

“We’ve also got her three-year-old full-sister Secret Chance ready to trial too, and she seems to be going along nicely as well,” Fanning said.

From Terry Gange for Harnesslink