Beer’s Kiwi buys pave the way

[Wandering Eyes]

Mitch Beer boasts a number of tried purchases from New Zealand, including the ever-improving Swagger (NZ) (Postponed) who will line up in the TAB Highway (1400m) this Saturday.

With prizemoney in country New South Wales set to be increased to A$24,000 per race, and a further 20 country meetings upgraded to country showcase status which boast programs with A$30,000 events, the market for tried horses in the country has exploded.

Beer says for a country stable like his, you have to look down all avenues for a bargain.

“When you don’t have a huge amount of money to spend you’ve got to shop around, you’ve got to keep your eyes open and you’ve got to look for deals,” he said.

“We have to be really relative in regard to how much we spend and how much we can win.

“We can’t just say that every horse is a Highway horse or a Championships horse or a Kosciuszko horse because relatively they’re not.

“It’d be nice to sit back at Sydney Easter and just spend a couple of million and buy a nice Fastnet Rock, but we’re not in that position so we’ve got to be looking at all different ways we can get the best horses we can.”

Beer has had success with tried horses purchased from across the ditch, including Hanger (NZ) (O’Reilly) who won the Echuca Cup (1400m) for Beer just last year. In fact, the Albury trainer’s very first runner was a tried horse purchased from New Zealand.

When asked if he thinks more country trainers will adopt the same tactics of buying tried horses from New Zealand, Beer said “100 percent.”

“I think that the market over there is massive and to buy a horse and bring it over here to compete at Wednesday to Saturday level is very hard. But, there’s so many races to be won in the bush here,” he continued.

“The whole thing of six or seven grand to fly them over here, it’s only a couple of clicks online and you can spend an extra five or six (thousand) very easily.

“I had just started training and I had a couple of yearlings and I knew I was a while away from having a horse that would be up and racing, so I purchased a filly out of New Zealand for $20,000 and she was my first ever runner.”

Beer, who has been in New Zealand this week inspecting recent purchases, recorded a winning treble at Albury on Tuesday and is hoping to add another to the tally at Sandown on Wednesday when Power Me Up (NZ) (Pins) contests the Ladbrokes Switch Handicap (1500m).

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