Brave Centaur to race for new stable

2 October 2014

Matamata galloper Brave Centaur will have his first start from new quarters in Saturday’s Listed A$120,000 Headquarters Tavern Stakes (1400m) at Flemington.

Previously prepared by Matamata’s Lance Noble, the Group One-placed O’Reilly seven-year-old has been transferred to Whittlesea trainers Peter Morgan and Craig Widdison.

Brave Centaur hasn’t raced since his fourth placing behind subsequent Group One performers I Do and Pussy O’Reilly in the Gr.3 Foxbridge Plate at Te Rapa in mid-August.

He had to be scratched from his planned first start in Melbourne when he went down on the flight over and took skin off his hip, which led to his programme being out of kilter with the Noble-trained Viadana and his subsequent transfer of stables.

Sav’s final resting place

“I’ve got a couple of very special bottles of wine that I’ve had for a number of years, and usually they would have been opened on a celebration, but I thought it was very pertinent, and well, it was a celebration, it was a celebration of his life,” Mark Chittick told The Straight.

19 June 2026

Savabeel: 2001—2026

Savabeel walked through our gates in 2005 and never stopped giving. Twenty-one years on, we said goodbye to our old friend, a horse who didn’t just shape a breeding industry, he defined one. There will never be another quite like him. Rest easy, Sav.