With just one day until the winners are announced for the 2020 O’Brien Awards, trainer Rachel Andrew joined a special edition of COSA TV on Saturday (Jan. 30) to discuss her nomination for the Future Star Award.
“It was a complete shock to be honest when I got the call,” Andrew said of her nomination, “and it’s just a privilege to have my name there considering everyone that’s been there before. It’s a huge honour no matter what happens—Austin [Sorrie] is more than deserving of the award—and it’s just great to be involved.”
Andrew competes against driver and fellow island native Austin Sorrie for the Future Star Award following his career year in 2020. But Andrew also posted significant numbers for her barn despite the COVID shutdown as well as many of her horses sustaining injuries through the year. With 294 starts last season, Andrew won 51 times and banked $439,095, pushing her over the $1-million plateau in earnings through her six-year long career.
“I think I had a stable of about 14, 15 horses at one point and then halfway through the season I was down to six or seven,” Andrew said. “I just had some crazy, crazy bad luck with injuries—and a lot of them were some of my top horses. But that’s the way the game goes, and the rest of my stable throughout the year just pulled up their socks and took one for the team and carried us the whole rest of the way.
“I knew—myself and my team—we had a great season,” Andrew also said. “I guess it was not a total shock [to be nominated] but still a shock… I don’t know how to explain it.”
Growing up on Prince Edward Island, Andrew came into harness racing through her father, an elementary school principal who also operated his own racing stable on the side. Andrew attributes her love of racing and her attitude to her father.
“From an early age, I would go to the barn with my dad. And I can remember—we had a half-mile track on our farm—sitting on the jogger with him. He would sometimes go in the mornings before school, and then after he would come home from school he would go back out and finish up. Those are my fondest memories. Actually I do recall going to the track with him when I was fairly young and he would be going out to race, and I guess I wasn’t quite old enough to be standing there by myself so he would put me in the starting car. And I would sit in there while he would race the horse, and then I guess I would go with him after. But I do remember that.
“My dad—who was one of the biggest influences for me—he always had a positive mindset, and we would get some horses that were banged up or had injuries,” Andrew also said. “He would never give them up; he would spend the time on them, and I try to do the same. And I have a great team, working with Travis [Cullen] every day in the barn also. We just try to support each other and keep upbeat because this is the name of the game. There’s definitely lows with the highs, and you just have to roll with them and stay positive and keep moving forward.
Andrew currently manages her stable alongside partner Travis Cullen, who she met in Alberta after graduating university and deciding to find a career in racing. The two began to work together after Andrew watched her dad drive a couple of horses for her uncle at then Alberta Downs in Lacombe. In 2017, Cullen and Andrew made then made the move to Ontario and eventually hit their stride into becoming a top force on the circuit.
“It was a huge change,” Andrew said of relocating to Ontario. “Racing in Alberta, we’d race one or two nights a week or the weekends usually, sometimes three. Coming to Ontario, it was a huge culture shock. We were going every night to the track. There was kind of a learning curve, especially going to Mohawk—the bigger track—just different kind of racing [and] racing [with] top-class drivers. It took awhile to find our groove, but I think we did. We figured out how to classify our horses the best to succeed.”
Coming into 2021, despite the uncertainty as to when racing will resume, Andrew will try to show up as strong to the track, if not stronger.
“For my goals, what I try to do is I try to set where I was the year before and try to exceed it,” Andrew said. “That’s usually what I try to push for. More than anything, as long as my horses are going out there and giving it their all, that’s all I can ever ask for in them.”
The 2020 Virtual O’Brien Awards Gala takes place on Sunday, January 31, 2021 and will be available for viewing on standardbredcanada.ca from 7:00 – 8:30 p.m. (EST).
The full COSA TV segment with Rachel Andrew, who talks of her influences and greatest memories of racing, is posted below: