Well In Sight’s (Shalaa) journey to Flemington is in no way your standard tale of a bush horse making it to the big smoke.
Mitch Beer’s unbeaten filly will contest the A$750,000 Inglis Sprint on Saturday after three wins at Albury but, before she even made it to the races, she’s been sold twice, changed trainers and had been shipped across the Tasman with the intention of heading to China.
“We bought her on gavelhouse.com for NZ$21,000, but she was originally an A$170,000 yearling,” Beer began of the horse’s back story.
“The owner had about ten horses in Sydney with different trainers and he decided to take all his horses back to China but, obviously during COVID, it wasn’t easy to get ten horses back to China.”
With her owner working on getting the horses to his homeland, Well In Sight sat in a paddock in New South Wales for five months until it was determined the only way to get them to the intended destination was via New Zealand.
“The ten of them went to New Zealand and they sat there for another three months and they couldn’t get to China, so he put them all up on gavelhouse.com for sale,” Beer explained.
“I bought her from New Zealand and then flew her back to Albury.”
Well In Sight had trialled twice as an early two-year-old under the Ciaron Maher and David Eustace banner before her international misadventure.
“She was a $170,000 yearling, she was BOBS qualified (NSW breeder, owner bonus scheme), she was educated and I thought paying NZ$21,000 for her was what she’d already be worth as a broodmare,” Beer said.
She finally made it to the races in January and broke her maiden impressively on debut before adding comfortable victories at Benchmark 58 and Class 2 level.
“She’s a very smart filly, she’s put them away three times and been eased up at the line.
“She’s very push button, very straightforward, she puts herself on the speed and she’s got a good turn of foot.”
While she’s comfortably beaten older horses in Albury, Beer is realistic about her chances against city class three-year-olds in Saturday’s sprint.
“Are we going down there thinking we can win? Probably not but, for these owners who are mostly young and many in their first horse, to have one that owes us nothing and is in a race down the Flemington straight, is all you can ask for,” Beer said.
And, for Beer personally, it’s a welcome change of luck after the two years of COVID chaos that came with having a stable on the border of two states with different and ever-changing rules.
“For all the s— that COVID caused for me, I feel like this is the universe’s gift back to me because it’s stopped her going to China and she’s found her way here, so I’ll take some silver lining out of that.”
