BRAVE MONARCH LOOKING TO DEFY THE ODDS

By Graham Potter | Thursday, October 29, 2026

Got a ticket. Got a chance.

That’ what the busload of connections of the four-year-old chestnut gelding Brave Monarch will have as a motto going into the $10 million Golden Eagle at Randwick on Saturday with their horse currently marked up as an $81 long shot.

You can probably make that more than one busload, given the huge numbers involved in the ownership group, and you can perhaps take that $81 mark with a pinch of salt as well, as all of the fifteen rivals of the $1.75 favourite Sheza Alibi’s have been handed exaggerated odds in the belief that the main fancy is difficult to oppose … the same story as last time when Sheza Alibi was beaten as a $1.40 chance by, wait for it, a $61 bolter.

Brave Monarch, who will be ridden by Martin Harley who has been in the saddle in nine out of the gelding's ten starts, comes into the Golden Eagle with a fifty percent winning strike rate … five wins from ten starts … the third highest strike-rate in the race behind Sheza Alibi and Decorum.

Those five wins came in two hotspots of form. In late 2025 Brave Monarch puts three successive wins on the scoreboard and then, during the Queensland Winter Carnival he claimed two significant back-to-back wins when taking out the Listed Daybreak Lover over 1400m and the Group 2 Queensland Guineas over 1600m.

The son of Brave Smash was given a four month break from race action after the Carnival and has had two runs since resuming in preparation for the biggest assignment of his career.

In those runs Brave Monarch finished third in the Listed Weetwood at Toowoomba over 1200m and then, last time, he finished seventh in the Listed Silver Eagle at Randwick over 1300m, meaning that the Munce Training Partnership have allowed him a finely measured race-to-race step up in distance as he now heads to the 1500m trip of the Golden Eagle, trying to bring peak fitness and a preferred distance together at the same time.

Even if that particular plan comes together, Brave Monarch will still have plenty of work to do … and we are not only talking about the Sheza Alibi factor here.

In that seventh place finish in the Silver Eagle, all of the six runners who beat Brave Monarch home that day … Apocalyptic, Skyhook, Beiwacht, Decorum, Within The Law and Attica … are all back again for the Golden Eagle challenge.

The Silver Eagle winner Apocalyptic is already a Group 1 winner. The Silver Eagle runner-up Skyhook has won twice at Group 2 level. Beiwacht, who finished third in the Silver Eagle is a three-time Group 1 winner while Attica also has a Group 1 success behind his name … all of which only goes to intensify the task facing Brave Monarch as well as emphasise the point that this is not a one horse race.

Nobody said it was going to be easy … for anybody.

Just to make the field in a race that had 115 nominations can already be counted as something like a win, particularly with the prize-money pool paying $100 000 or more all the way down to ninth place, with a cool $5.250 000 going to the winner.

There is plenty on the line.

It won’t be a place for the faint-hearted.

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