Lancaster Makes Mark In Ontario

This was an ‘Amber Alert’ exercise in reverse. Amber Lancaster, like most adventurous 20-year-olds living at home, longed to travel and test life’s challenges that

lie ahead. So one rainy Vancouver day in April she packed up her harness racing tack at Fraser Downs and headed for the promised land of Ontario. “My friends refer it to as the Far East,” she giggles. “I have to admit that my first three days in a big, new environment were pretty scary. My first reaction was to get back on an airplane and go home.”

Her early return to the west coast would have been fine with her parents, Tim and Sandra Brown. The longtime husband and wife trainer/driver team cherished having Amber around the barns since she was a little girl. But they also understood it was time for her to spread her wings.

After graduating from her grooming chores to acquiring her trainer’s licence three years ago, Amber proudly points to having $162,000 in earnings on her trainer’s card. Her goal is to one day follow her step-father’s path of becoming a top-rated driver.

Amber had a Fraser Downs crowd on its feet in March when she drove Cheyenne Dusk to victory in a special non-betting ladies race as part of an evening dedicated to Breast Cancer Research. A horse named Ignite The Spark, driven by Alivia Gogush, was on its way to winning with a two-and-a-half length lead on the final turn when young Miss Lancaster urged Cheyenne Dusk to close with a rush and win in a photo finish.

Judging by the cheers from the sidelines, it seemed as though her entire class from Kwantlen College in Langley was at Fraser Downs that night. “I had been taking a criminology course at Kwantlen but I opted for this break because my heart is with horses,” Amber, a professional model while she was in high school, says. “I’ll always be with horses. I’ll stay in the business for the rest of my life. My plan is to do what I wanted to do in the first place and that was take a veterinarian course.”

Amber’s unwavering dedication to the harness industry was again evident when the first week of her Ontario adventure seemed destined to fail. “The person that I had planned to work for hired someone else three days before I arrived,” she says. “I almost came home but then my friend from Fraser Downs, Brad Watt, introduced me to Kevin O’Reilly and he gave me a stable of five horses to look after at Classy Lane, a beautiful training centre that has a one-mile track. I just love it.”

She also loves her new living arrangements. Bill and Laurie Davis, mainstays at Fraser Downs until Bill decided last year to apply his awesome driving talents on the tougher eastern circuit, have opened their home to Amber.

“They’re like family,” she says. “It helps when I get homesick, which is quite often. But despite the false start when I first arrived, I know I made the right move, at least for now.”

(Courtesy Fraser Downs & The Canadian Sportsman)