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By Ray Hickson

They’ve been housemates, they’re training partners and as far as Mitch Beer is concerned having George Carpenter alongside him makes the racing game even better.

And we all know the affable Beer likes to enjoy his racing.

Beer says the difference the addition of 26-year-old George Carpenter into his Kembla Grange stable, and his life, has made can't be underplayed.

Kembla based training partners George Carpenter and Mitchell Beer.

“First and foremost our relationship, we are very close and I think regardless of someone’s skill or ability it’s the connection he and I have. Not only when it comes to work, we’ve become very good friends,’’ Beer said.

“I'm just in the process of moving but we’ve lived with each other for the past 16 months. I don’t know anyone else I could live and work with but he and I just seem to gel and we did from the get go.

“It really is a two person job, you can’t pay someone enough to take that level of care and treat it like it’s their own.

“We have 45 in work, it doesn’t sound like a lot when you compare that to the mega stables but for us it’s a lot of work.

“If we have a runner either George or I go, if we’re at the trials one of us is there, we don’t like not to be present for our owners and to do that it takes two of us.”

Beer and Carpenter’s partnership hit the ground running on September 25 with a winner from their first runner and they’re hoping emerging mare Sunrise can provide their biggest win to date in the Group 3 $300,000 MCR The Warra (1000m) at Kembla Grange on Saturday.

Choose your own description as to how the partnership came about – coincidence, fluke, chance, serendipitous. Regardless, Beer says it works.

The pair crossed paths after Beer had a conversation with Queensland based trainer Matt Hoysted, who he used to work with for Lloyd Williams, and expressed he was looking for a training partner and hadn’t had a lot of luck.

“I was actively looking for someone and none of it worked,’’ he said.

“Off the cuff I was talking to (Matt) one day and I mentioned I was trying to find an assistant trainer to go into partnership with.

“Two days later George rang, he came down and a fortnight later he handed in his Queensland license and moved down.”

On the racing front, Beer feels everything is falling into place for Sunrise to run a big race in The Warra while aware it’s her biggest test since joining his stable.

Already this spring she’s had a bout of colic, hurt her leg when she kicked out, was trapped wide in her first-up run and had to be scratched from a race with a virus.

But when she scored at Randwick on Big Dance Day the trainer went from feeling like the preparation was doomed to being back on track.

“The biggest plus for me is I feel like we’ve got all our bad luck out of the way at the start of the preparation,’’ he said.

“Everything has turned around and she’s going to the race we wanted to go to in impeccable order, she’s coming off a tough win and she’s had a really good couple of weeks.

“We’re not swimming against the tide, everything has fallen into place right when we needed it to. She’s going into Saturday with great momentum.”

That’s important because Sunrise, $5 with TAB on Wednesday, will need to step up.

Beer concedes she’s been well placed to win three of her six starts this year.

“She went out at the end of last prep having won a restricted Class 1, albeit in good time, and went to an okay Midway and won impressively and she wasn’t beaten far in a fillies’ Listed race,’’ he said.

“She came back this preparation and we were at a fork in the road.

"She either goes on with the job and she’s going to be a nice Saturday/Listed mare or we’re going to have to try and win another Midway.

“God bless her she’s taken the path we wanted her to. She’s got to rise to the occasion again.”

Sunrise wins at Randwick on November 4

Hellish is one of the outsiders in the Altus Traffic Handicap (1000m) but Beer is adamant he’s a horse that could surprise a few.

A prolific winner in North Queensland prior to walking into the Beer and Carpenter yard, the five-year-old gelding showed the trainer promise in his first-up third at Wyong a few weeks ago.

“I didn’t know whether he was going to measure up to Bong Bong or Rosehill. His form was a bit hard to assess,’’ he said.

“He bombed the start, it was hard to make ground and he was beaten a short margin and he’s improved tenfold from that.

“He doesn’t strike an overly strong race for a Saturday race and I think he’ll go around good odds and run really well.”

All the fields, form and replays for Saturday’s meeting at Kembla Grange