A horse called Brave Warrior won a Maiden Handicap at Doomben on Wednesday for trainer Maryann Brosnan. It was an impressive enough win at the third time of asking but the son of Exceed And Excel has some way to go if he is to emulate the deeds of his namesake who retired twenty-six years ago.
The Brave Warrior of the nineteen-nineties won eight races in a career spanning twenty-two races which ran from December 1993 to August 1995.
Those wins included the 1994 Magic Millions Two-Year-Old Classic and Group 2 victories in the Peter Pan, the Gloaming and the Phar Lap. Equally impressive, if not even more noteworthy, was the chestnut’s results in Group 1 company where he finished second in the Champion Stakes, the George Ryder and the Queensland Derby. Throw in his third place finishes in the Doncaster and the Queensland Guineas and he was clearly of sufficient quality to be able to display his class and be competitive at various levels.
With his career cut short through injury, Brave Warrior retired to stud where he sadly he only produced two crops, from which he produced fifty-eight winners from one hundred and seven foals, before his untimely death in 1998.
Few would have known Brave Warrior better than Chris Munce who rode the son of Cossack Warrior in eighteen of his twenty-two starts and in six of his eight wins.
Munce, who was at Doomben yesterday in his capacity as a trainer, has fond memories of the Brave Warrior of old.
“My wife Cathy … she part owned him. She had a share in the horse. It was trained by my old boss Eric Kirwan. I was apprenticed to him,” said Munce.
“Brave Warrior was a very, very good galloper. He never won a Group 1, but he won Group 2’s and Group 3’s.
“If I had to go for his best win … apart from the Magic Millions of course, that was a terrific effort that day … I’d have to say it was his first start in a race. You had to see it to believe it.
“It was only a small field, but he rounded them up and won by a very big space and he just showed everybody then already what a good galloper he was.
“I had ridden him in all of his lead-ups to the Millions, but I had a fall earlier in the day on one of Bruce Brown’s horses and I couldn’t ride him in the Magic Millions, so Neil Williams picked up the ride and won.”
Brave Warrior went into the 1994 Magic Millions Two-Year-Old Classic unbeaten in two starts … and he kept that unbeaten record at the time intact by beating St Covet and Shayne Dye by 0.40 lengths.
“While he was an extremely talented galloper, he was probably going to be even a better sire.
“If he had been able to go on for longer, I think there is no doubt he would have been one of the sires Queensland has had.”
Fond memories indeed!
