Paul Murray is set to lose stable star and Group 2 winner Alma's Fury, who will be transferred to a Queensland trainer in the new year.
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The Apollo Stakes winner embarks on his final two starts for Murray over the next month in the Villiers Stakes, before launching his Bernborough Cup defence at Toowoomba on New Year's Eve.
"He'll be going to the Villiers, two weeks later he will be going to the Bernborough and then he's staying in Queensland," a disappointed Murray told The Punt.
"He'll have two more runs [for me] and then he'll be living in Queensland."
Meringo Stud boss and former Racing NSW chairman Tony Hartnell owns 50 per cent of Alma's Fury, while the other half is shared by Queensland interests.
The new trainer for Alma's Fury, which ran a cracking third behind the unbeaten White Sage and promising Terravista in the Listed Festival Stakes on Saturday, is yet to be named.
Alma's Fury is not the first horse to be whisked out of Murray's yard after the Kembla Grange trainer nursed them to stakes success.
Ill-fated stallion Predatory Pricer and Phenomenal Lass were taken out of his stable in similar fashion.
Alma's Fury's career highlight came when he emerged from the Warwick Farm gloom to win the Apollo Stakes earlier this year, a couple of months after he broke his stakes race duck in the Bernborough Handicap.
The son of Refuse To Bend subsequently ran well in the Group 1 Chipping Norton Stakes and time-honoured Doncaster Handicap.
"We've put a lot of work into him," Murray said. "He's going to get harder to place, but I can't do much about it.
"[Hartnell's] a bit disappointed, but he's got a lot of young horses to come through and hopefully some of them will be here.
"[Alma's Fury] might nearly be at the end of his tether, but they'll keep picking up races with him."
The horse's five-year-old season was enough to see him shortlisted for Provincial Horse of the Year honours.
Alma's Fury will be near the top of betting for the Villiers, a race in which he was nosed out of winning last year by All Legal. Paul's father Bede prepared the third placegetter Darci Be Good.
The now six-year-old has amassed more than $568,000 in prize money from 40 starts, with the majority of future racing to be in Queensland.
Meanwhile, Darci Be Good's summer campaign kicked off with an underwhelming exhibition gallop at Kembla Grange on Sunday.
The horse, owned by a syndicate of Illawarra Turf Club members, was safely held by stablemate Doubt Not in a 1000m hit-out.
