Rowe On Monday - Savabeel’s final resting place, Singo and his Slipper star and Ascot success for Aussies

Savabeel has been buried right outside his box at Waikato Stud, a place he spent the last 21 years of his life and reshaped that of the Chittick family and the New Zealand thoroughbred industry.

The stable that Savabeel occupied will also be turned into a memorial in a lasting tribute to the 10-time champion New Zealand stallion who died suddenly on Friday at the age of 24.

Having informed Savabeel’s shareholders of his death and burying the turf great, Chittick took time for reflection of what the horse had done for Waikato.

“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,” Chittick told this column.

“One of the first people outside of the farm that I rang was, obviously, Rogie (Savabeel’s trainer Graeme Rogerson), and he just said the best words, ’we’ve had a lot of bright times, and that’s what we’ve got to remember and celebrate’, so that’s what we were doing.

“There was no real significance with this spot other than it was just a really nice day.”

Waikato Stud stood champion stallions O’Reilly and Pins (two-time Centaine Award winner for global earnings), among others, but Chittick believes 2004 Cox Plate winner Savabeel was on a pedestal all of his own.

“(When we bought him) going back to the 22 or 23 years with the kids, Charlotte was obviously here, was born just before him, George (was born) around about the same time, and obviously Harry and Charlie weren’t, so, for those ones in particular, he’s been here longer than them,” he says.

“He gave us more Saturdays to celebrate hard than most, and we certainly did that, and what he’s achieved and is still achieving (is amazing).

“As we’ve said so many times, he gets two-year-olds through to older horses, fillies, colts, sprinters, stayers, broodmares, all of those things – he’s just the best.”

While Chittick’s immediate family are understandably grieving the loss of Savabeel, so too are Waikato Stud’s staff and in particular Ryan Figgins and Dave O’Leary, the two men who spent most time with the stallion during his stud career.

“Both those guys have looked after him probably 50 per cent each during the time that he’s been at the farm and he’d been looked after so well,” he said.

The memories are worth a drink indeed.

Ha Ha – Singleton’s unlikely Slipper winner

Just by chance at the weekend, while on a long drive, this writer was listening to the audio version of Jessica Owers’ excellent book Magic Millions: The Rise, Fall and the Extraordinary Rise of an Iconic Australian Company.

It just so happened that 2001 Golden Slipper winner Ha Ha was mentioned in one of the chapters, coinciding with the daughter of Danehill’s death last week at the age of 27.

Ha Ha was raced by then Magic Millions co-owner John Singleton and trained by Gai Waterhouse, who prepared the mare to win eight of her 25 starts, with a Group 1 Flight Stakes also on her record.

As Owers details in the book, Magic Millions under the ownership of Gerry Harvey, John Singleton and Rob Ferguson in 1999 had guaranteed vendors who offered Danehill yearlings at the 2000 Gold Coast sale a minimum of $300,000.

It helped garner support from breeders of elite horses, which in turn attracted support of buyers.

The guarantee worked, to a degree, but the owners of Magic Millions were left with a seven-figure bill with some of the Danehill yearlings failing to meet their reserve.

Singleton was “forced” to buy Ha Ha for the reserve price, and what a bargain she turned out to be.

She was Australia’s champion two- and three-year-old filly and banked almost $3 million in prize money. She had four live foals and produced just the one winner, but that doesn’t detract from her racecourse ability.

“In her later years, she enjoyed a life of luxury at Glastonbury Farm, having previously resided at Strawberry Hill Stud,” Glastonbury’s Yvonne Clerke wrote.

“There, she spent her retirement casting a watchful eye over the future stars of the track, a fitting role for a mare who had given so much to the thoroughbred industry.”

Aussie connections aplenty at Royal Ascot

It was a long week for the bleary eyed who stayed up to take in five days of Royal Ascot.

That said, judging by the social media posts, many Australasian industry players ventured north and were trackside at the Royal course rather than glued to their TVs in the middle of the night.

The Australian sprinters – Overpass, Joliestar and Asfoora – were gallant in defeat in their respective races while the Australian-connected Wathnan Racing enjoyed another carnival to remember.

Wathan Racing is owned by the Emir of Qatar, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani.

With Twin Hills’ Olly Tait overseeing the fast-evolving thoroughbred racing empire alongside Blandford Bloodstock’s Richard Brown as its agent, Wathan Racing enjoyed four Ascot winners: Earth Shot, Map Of Stars, Opportunity and Lost Boys.

The aforementioned Australian connections weren’t the only ones to enjoy success, with agent Will Johnson having a hand in Listed Windsor Castle Stakes-winning two-year-old King Of Cloughan.

A son of Coolmore shuttler St Mark’s Basilica, the Joseph O’Brien-trained colt is out of US stakes-winning mare Mystic Eyes.

The daughter of Maclean’s Music was bought in the States by Hiroyuki Nagata, a client of Johnson’s, who sent her to Ireland to be served by St Mark’s Basilica as she was again the following year. That mating resulted in another colt.

With his oldest northern hemisphere crop being three-year-olds and his southern hemisphere-bred crop being two-year-olds, St Mark’s Basilica is the sire of six stakes winners so far including three-time Group 1-winning filly Diamond Necklace.

His Australian-conceived two-year-olds include the unbeaten Tasmanian Aristopolos and four other winners.

It was also another big Royal Ascot for Australian-bred Starspangledbanner, with his three-year-old daughter Precise claiming her fourth Group 1 victory in the Coronation Stakes. Spicy Marg and Gstaad both ran second in Group 1 features.

Zac Lloyd also had his first Royal Ascot win, while James McDonald had two victories in the week.