Lauren Tritton was an accomplished Australian driver with 920 wins when she came to the United States back in March 2020 with her husband Shane. Despite her countless successes in stakes races in her homeland, she decided to hang up her colors to concentrate on building a stable and expanding her family. After making just seven trips behind the gate in her first two years stateside, she got the “itch” again and has since won 65 of 284 starts (22.8%) of her races. The 31-year-old, who became the first woman to start in the Meadowlands Pace and won the Battle of Lake Erie at Northfield Park, found some time in her schedule between training horses and picking up her kids from school to discuss her path in the sport, her possible position as a role model for females interested in driving, and much more. Enjoy!   How did you get started in harness racing? School holidays started early for me because I went to a private school and there was a fellow who lived behind me that had Standardbreds, so I would help out during the holidays. How old were you when you started? I was 14. Did you and your family have any previous ties to harness racing? No. We were into equestrians and had Show Horses. I read that you were the youngest driver – male or female – to win 500 races in Australia. At your peak, where did you rank among all drivers in that region? I was top 10 in Australia for a while. I was the first female to win the State Premiership, which includes five tracks. If you win the Premiership you are the best driver. If you win that you are staying in the top five drivers year-round. You can’t win the Premiership without being in the top five because we don’t race that often and have to travel around from track to track. You and your husband Shane have now been in the United States for five full years. What made you make the move? Shane was the leading trainer and I won the driver’s Premiership. We couldn’t do more than what we were doing and we were chasing our tails for money. We thought ‘what are we doing wrong?’ We looked at our situation and the prize money in America and thought we would be in a better position financially if we tried to compete here. Have things worked out as you expected in North America? It’s tough and it was never going to be easy, but we’ve accomplished things we never thought we would accomplish. We are doing things we dreamt of doing but we work our butts off for it. How many horses are in your barn? We currently have 28. Here or in Australia what is your favorite track to race at? Why? In Australia it would be Menangle. You race against the best drivers and the best horses every week there. It was also where I was based. Here I would have to say The Meadowlands. You get to drive against the best drivers in the world there. It is genuine racing. It is clean racing, and it is a beautiful track. ► Sign up for our FREE DRF Harness Digest Newsletter What is your favorite thing to do outside of harness racing? Take my kids places and make memories. How old are your kids? 7 and 4. What is one thing about you most fans/bettors don’t know? I’m a mother of two beautiful kids and I would give the shirt off my back if you needed it. What is one word that describes harness racing for you? Adrenaline. What is the best advice you’ve ever gotten or given about harness racing? In harness racing it has been really tough for me, so I always got advice to be a thick-skinned, tough person because it has been difficult for me to earn respect. So it is hard for me to give advice to people because I don’t want to scare them away with how tough it was for me to get to where I am. My advice would be that success comes from hard work and don’t let anyone tell you that you can’t do something. What was your best moment in harness racing? Definitely Arty [Lochinvar Art] winning the Battle of Lake Erie in 2023 was one of my biggest highlights in North America. To win that was pretty cool. In Australia it was winning my first stakes final with a horse who is a claimer out here, Marty Monkhouser. I beat Bit Of A Legend out there in the Breeders Crown with him. Incidentally, Bit Of A Legend ended up becoming your father-in-law’s horse here in the U.S., right? He ended up being able to buy Bit Of A Legend because he got beat in that race. They became a little discouraged with him and decided to sell him. Which is the best horse you’ve ever driven? Lochinvar Art. Your driving has taken a bit of a back seat to working with your husband as trainer and family life. Is that by design? Yes. I hung my boots up when I left [Australia] and said I wasn’t driving anymore. I was going to focus on training but the bug really bit me when I got back here. I had to buy new boots and a suit again. I drive now when I’m needed. Do you miss being a regular catch driver? No, because it was so different back home. It’s not late nights like it is here and you don’t race as often. I wouldn’t enjoy it as much. I drove a lot back home. I would do 20 training trips in the morning, then I’d go to the races and we’d have 25 horses in at one meeting and four or five in each race. I had my shot and I don’t want my kids to miss out because of the races. As someone who competed against the McCarthy’s and Dexter Dunn overseas, how do you think you’d stack up here versus them if given the opportunity? They are great, safe drivers. They have a lot of respect for me and I’ve got a lot of respect for them. I’m sure we’d have a good time. Todd [McCarthy] and I are very competitive against each other and have been for our whole careers, basically. I enjoyed driving against all of them and hopefully they think the same about me. They don’t intimidate me at all and they are great people as well. Regardless of sex, it can be difficult for any driver to break in with the top ones, no? It took a long time for me to earn the respect in the ranks . . . If you are safe and make good decisions most of the time, the drivers will respect you. We are all just out there to earn money. You recently took a trip to across the Atlantic to compete in a women’s race during the Vincent Delaney Memorial weekend. What was that like? It was really cool. I can’t wait to go back again this year, though I’m not sure if they have a race for the ladies. Shane and I actually bought a share in two yearlings that will hopefully race in the VDM this year. It was a really great experience and I’m very thankful for it. We raced on a sand thoroughbred track with a high running rail on the inside. We raced against girls from all different countries and I also picked up a drive in the final of the 3-year-old VDM and finished third, which is really cool. You became the first woman to compete in the Meadowlands Pace and became the first woman to win the Battle of Lake Erie. Do you place importance on those types of sex barrier achievements? I didn’t until I moved here. I didn’t realize it was so foreign and maybe frowned upon; not in a bad way but just that it was different and I didn’t realize how different things were here. I had a lot of women reach out to me when I won the Battle of Lake Erie and some still do. They said ‘thank you’ and I wasn’t aware what those thank yous meant at first but some of the messages I was receiving were incredible. They basically said thank you for doing that because there really have been no women to be game enough to do it. A lot of women reached out to me and said that they felt if they made a bad decision in a race they’d have to hear that it was because they are a woman and I kind of helped them get over that fear. They are the people that make me want to keep driving at The Meadowlands and Yonkers every week. I was also the only woman to compete throughout the Borgata series. It’s crazy. There is absolutely no reason why that is a thing. Like I’m the only woman who drives at Yonkers every week. Why is that? It’s just weird. Me, Todd [McCarthy] and Amanda Turnbull, she’s an amazing female driver, fought out the Premiership every year for like four or five years. She actually won it the year before I did. Female drivers would be in the top five every year back at home, so it was a big eye-opener for me coming here.  When you first started driving here in 2020, considering that many people likely didn’t know you, what was that experience like? When I won my first race I had people coming up to me congratulating me on the win and telling me how it was just the start of my driving career and I was like offended. I was a top driver in Australia. Did people not watch the races? After everything that I did, all the Premierships that I won and I go to Monticello and people are congratulating me on my first win. I was shattered [laughing]. If you had the power to change one thing in the sport, what would it be? Being better at providing a stepping stone into the sport for the next generation. In Australia for the first five years or 250 winners, I think, of your career you are a claim driver. That means as a young driver you can drop a horse down in grade. So I could put a horse that was non-winners of seven races into a non-winners of five if I use one of these drivers. It’s basically an apprenticeship and gives young drivers the opportunity to get work. In the U.S. it is more of the same 10 drivers at every track and it is hard for young guys to get an opportunity and work their way up through the rankings. If you are any good at it you never last the five years. It starts where you can get a horse down two grades and then it goes down to one. It is a good opportunity for a driver because they get into easier spots and win races which makes people want to list them. That’s how I started my career off. What does a day in the life of Lauren Tritton look like? We get up, get both kids off to school, start training the horses – that takes all freaking day [laughing], then I ride my riding horse. After that I pick my kids up from school. If I don’t have racing it is sporting events with the kids, dinner and bed. If I do have races, I get the kids from school, the babysitter comes, we go to the track and get home at 2 in the morning. Time for the stretch drive: Best Horse you ever saw in person: Lochinvar Art in Australia and Karl here.  Lasix – Yes or No: Yes. Favorite TV Show: Peaky Blinders. Trotters or Pacers: Pacers.