Pioneer harness racing driver Jo Herbert is making a comeback after a hiatus of over 10 years during which she became a mother.
After the birth of her first child, Herbert never intended to stop driving but she couldn't continue a career where she had driven 193 winners.
“I didn't really want to give up in the first place, at the moment timing was right, so it was give it a go now before it’s too late,” Herbert said.
“Being a single mum and him getting quite sick, finally diagnosed with Chron's at two and a half, he didn’t sleep his first night through until he was seven, he had a bit of a battle so it got too hard.”
As one of the top drivers of her generation, the decision to leave completely and care for her son was a hard one.
“Yeah it was really hard, to be in horses you have to be 100% dedicated and horses take up a lot of your time and he needed me more than the horses did,” she said.
With her son now nearly a teenager it has opened the gate for her to come back and she's itching to get to a milestone she narrowly missed out on.
“I didn't realise I was as close to me 200 at the time when I did stop, when someone said, ‘you can’t have been far away from 200’, I may have tried to stay a bit longer to get those.”
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