ELORA, ON — He never imagined that Beer Budget would be a Gold Final contender, but Chris Beaver would love to see the two-year-old trotting colt get a taste of the champagne way of life during Grand River Raceway’s popular Industry Day celebration on Monday.

“We bought him as a weanling to run with another horse,” explains Beaver. “And we named him Beer Budget because we bought him so inexpensively.

“He’s always trained really well, not shown a whole lot of speed, but trained well enough I thought he would be a good Grassroots horse,” adds the Rockwood resident. “He really didn’t show much speed until he started racing.”

Beer Budget made his racing debut in the Gold Series season opener on June 29 at Kawartha Downs and trotted to a fifth-place finish in his elimination. In the season’s second Gold Elimination, on July 13 at Mohawk Racetrack, the Yankee Paco son managed a fourth-place finish in spite of suffering interference and being knocked off stride in the stretch.

Back at Mohawk for a consolation event on July 20, Beer Budget delivered an impressive come from behind effort to finish second over a track rated one second slower than normal and in last week’s Gold Elimination at Grand River Raceway the young trotter overcame Post 8 to make his first appearance in the winner’s circle. In rein to Jody Jamieson, Beer Budget pressured pacesetter Telling Tales from the outside for almost half of the mile, then swept around the final turn and down the stretch to a one and one-quarter length victory in 2:02.2.

“He’s pretty tough, he seems to hang in there pretty good,” says Beaver, who shares ownership on the colt with Johanna Beaver of Delaware, OH.

Beer Budget will make his bid for a Gold Final crown from Post 6 in Monday’s seventh race, facing off against nine other colts with the same goal in mind.

“It (Post 6) could be worse, but it’s going to take a lot of racing luck,” says Beaver, who won the first Gold Final of the season with Smarty Jims, a Striking Sahbra son currently sidelined by a minor bout with the equine virus. “He’s not a particularly fast horse off the gate. He can trot as fast in the turns as he can in the straightaway’s, but as far as blasting to the front, I think some of the other horses will have an advantage.

“We’ll hope for a lot of action on the front end to give our horse a chance,” adds the former Ohio resident who is getting ready to apply for permanent residency in Canada. “He’s good enough to do some good in there, there’s just a lot of horses to get around.”

With Jamieson committed to his father Carl’s horse Think Gold, Luc Ouellette will pick up the lines on Beer Budget Monday. Among the horses that Beaver considers their toughest competition is Ernie B Earnest, who clocked a 2:01 track record in the elimination round.

“I think Norm Jones’s horse (Ernie B Earnest) looked the most impressive, setting the track record, obviously, and he’s got the rail,” notes Beaver. “I think he’s definitely the one to beat.”

The other elimination winners, Evidence As and Catch My Korvette, will also line up to Beer Budget’s left, starting from Posts 4 and 5 respectively.

The two-year-old trotting colts will battle for the Gold Series title in Race 7 on Monday, two races before the afternoon’s feature event, the $300,000 Battle Of Waterloo. Post time for Grand River Raceway’s popular Industry Day program is 1 pm.

For complete entries please go to:

http://www.standardbredcanada.ca/entries/data/egrvrmo.html#N7