Coast club lures Lee
BALLINA trainer Stephen Lee will open a satellite stable on the Gold Coast in a bid to expand his presence in southeast Queensland.
Lee has agreed to a deal to use some of the stables at the Gold Coast Turf Club’s Traintech facility in Bundall and will initially bring a group of up to 12 horses in the coming months before building his numbers further.
Lee said the timing was right to launch the new stable on the back of the impending track upgrade at Ballina, on the NSW north coast.
Other reasons for the move were prizemoney rises and fee cuts on the Gold Coast and his more regular trips to Brisbane tracks and to the Bundall course.
“They have got good training facilities up there and good training tracks,” Lee said.
“Being an hour and a bit away from home I can race the horses and slip them down here and spend a week here on the water walker and in paddocks and things like that to freshen them up before heading back up.
“I’m up there pretty much every Saturday and I’m looking at trying to expand the stables and clients.
“If you have clients up there you can always head back down to NSW and viceversa.
“The prizemoney has gone up there at the Gold Coast and it’s equivalent to down here so it’s more attractive. It’s also a little easier to get to Brisbane while they are upgrading the track (at Ballina).”
Lee said he had no plans to sell his two Ballina properties to move to the Gold Coast full-time but was open to buying space at his second base in the future, potentially at Traintech when it is redeveloped.
“It just fits in nice with the water walker and our facilities down here,” Lee said. “It’s like having a property and provincial city-based stable.”
The Gold Coast club is about to launch a $4 million development of its Traintech stable and training facility.
The three-year plan is to increase the number of stables at the Traintech site from 130 to 300.