Premiership winning harness racing couple Shane Tritton and Lauren Panella will be relocating from Keinbah to Menangle early next month.
Tritton and Panella have clocked up almost 1000 winners out of the property during the best part of the last decade but an offer to move to Sydney’s harness racing headquarters was tough to knock back despite family ties in the Hunter region.
“It’s all happening in the first week of February,” Tritton said.
“We’ve trained 921 winners out of here during the last seven or so years and the family would have trained another 1000 before that so there is a lot of history there.
“But the travel has been tough and they are building whole new training facilities down at Menangle with stables, water walkers and paddock space.
“They approached us to go down and although it was a tough decision to leave here we would be silly not to go.”
Tritton has gradually expanded his operation since his days as a maths tutor training on the side.
He had been based at Metford, Ashtonfield and Rutherford but always trained out of Keinbah.
Clayton Harmey was there the five years prior to Tritton.
Previously it was Tritton’s step-father Clarrie Sweeney, partner of Tritton’s mother Marlene, who operated the farm.
In more recent times Tritton has been running the show and it has been a successful period, including group 1 victories and runners in both Inter Dominion and Miracle Mile finals.
He has notched up six consecutive trainer’s premierships at Newcastle, which included becoming the first to reach 100 winners in a single season.
In 2013-2014 he was the first country trainer to win a NSW Metropolitan premiership.
Three times he has finished runner-up in the state premiership race, which included a NSW trainer’s national record of 222 wins in 2014-2015.
This prolific period has also coincided with Panella arriving on the scene and during the past three years she has been kicking goals as a driver.
This has included two Newcastle premierships, a reigning state title and a historic NSW Metropolitan crown, becoming the first female to clinch the prize in 2013-2014.
Together, the couple are currently working about 50 horses but that looks set to change in the near future.
“I think we will cut down a fair bit from there,” Tritton said.
“We will probably have a smaller team and aim for quality.
“Hopefully we can kick on to get some better results with some better horses.”
Tritton has both Katy Perry and Silver Back in the Golden Guitar final at Tamworth on Friday night and said one last triumph would be ideal.
“A Golden Guitar would be a good way to go out,” Tritton said.
“Katy Perry has a good chance, she is a good horse and will go onto bigger things from here.”
Katy Perry, to be steered by Panella from barrier six in the $25,500 decider, will face tough opposition from the next gate in fastest qualifier and track record holder Cyclone Kate (barrier five).
Silver Back will start the 1980 metre journey from the outside of the back row in barrier 10 with Joe Pace on board.
One inside that will be Tiz A Smokey (barrier nine) for Kitchener trainer Michael Osborn and Morisset driver Mark Callaghan.
Elsewhere and Arms Of An Angel will contest the Chariots Of Fire heats at Menangle on Saturday for Tritton and Panella while on the same night Newcastle International Paceway will host a nine-race meeting from 6.10pm.
By Josh Callinan
Reprinted with permission of The Maitland Mercury news site
