How Apple Valley’s Gabriele Bernat blazed the trail for woman racers
The walls of Gabriele Bernat's Apple Valley home are covered with photos and memorabilia marking her career as the first winning female sulky driver in California.

A person once said, “Everyone has a story” — or probably they reported, “There are a hundreds of thousands stories in the Substantial Desert” — and anyone who does nearly anything with horses normally has a lot of tales to convey to.

Gabriele Bernat is just one these kinds of person.

Gabriele now lives in Apple Valley, her home filled with scrapbooks and partitions adorned with just a sample of her amazing career — a single that performed out on the race observe and put her in the equestrian record books.

Gabriele was a single of the initially female harness racing motorists, as well as 1 of the initially female members of the Western Harness Association. She was also the very first female to win a harness race at Hollywood Park,  at the ripe aged age of 23 in 1977.

The number of “firsts” on Gabriele’s racing resume is amazing. She was the first female driver at Centennial Downs in Denver Cloverdale Raceway in British Columbia and Calgary Stampede and Northlands Park in Alberta. 

In California, she achieved the same feat at Golden Gate Fields, Hollywood Park, Los Alamitos and Bay Meadows, the place she was also the primary driver or among the top rated 5 primary motorists many situations.

“I won 85% of my races,” she said.

She raced at Los Alamitos from 1981 to 1999, often the only female driver amid almost 100 males. Her data in the Common Driver Standings — which ranks drivers according to the