Legarto star of first Ellerslie meeting in two years

Legarto winning at Ellerslie’s comeback meeting.

Five seconds of Legarto magic yesterday confirmed what the new Ellerslie is going to be: a good horse’s track.

The home of New Zealand racing was reopened yesterday after nearly two years off with the first meeting on its StrathAyr track.

The day and track could hardly have gone much better.

Legarto was the star of the show with an explosive win in the open 1400m, slingshotting past Sacred Satono, with Sharp ‘N’ Smart a vastly-improved third in the most-anticipated race of the comeback meeting.

Legarto’s performance was a relief for trainer Ken Kelso after he had initially thought the new surface might be too firm, and then when earlier races had looked to favour the front runners, he was worried his superstar could be vulnerable.

“I walked the track before the first on the card and it felt firm, so I was a bit worried with that and the leaders getting home in the early races,” says Kelso.

“But the jockeys are saying it doesn’t feel as firm for the horses and Ryan said she [Legarto] loved it and it was ideal.”

Her performance and even Kelso’s comments could be indicative of the new Ellerslie, which feels firm when walking on but the jockeys have said right from the first workouts rides beautifully and has enough give for the horses, who weigh much more, so get into the surface.

With the StrathAyr track likely to be the same no matter what the weather, Ellerslie will now be a good horse’s track, because while there are plenty of good horses who can handle wet tracks, the reality is the better the track, the more it suits the elite horses because they are the fastest.

It is going to take punters and even trainers considering aiming horses for races there a while to get their head around the fact that Ellerslie should theoretically never be rain-affected again, so the single biggest requirement to win races there will be speed.

That won’t suit all horses but will suit the best ones.

Legarto may well be the best horse trained in New Zealand, since Imperatriz is based in Australia for the foreseeable future, and the $1 million Elsdon Park Aotearoa Classic on January 27 now looks hers to lose.

She was brilliant at 1400m yesterday but should be even more potent over the 1600m next up and it is hard to see any of those who finished behind her yesterday beating her in 12 days.

Sacred Satono was good and Team Rogerson got their first real glimpse of the real Sharp ‘N’ Smart this season with his third and he will only get better when he steps up to 2000m and further.

For those keeping score, the first race on the new track was won by Merchant Queen, who remains unbeaten in three starts for Stephen Marsh.

The win capped a great weekend for Marsh after Mercurial won a rough-house Telegraph at Trentham on Saturday.

Ellerslie chief executive Paul Wilcox was delighted and relieved by the comeback meeting.

“The feedback from the jockeys and trainers has been first class,” says Wilcox.

“We had winners from in front and from back in the field and we had a really good crowd but everything went smoothly.

“It was the opening we dreamed of and now we get ready for the TAB Karaka Millions.”

That twilight meeting, with $4.45m worth of races on Saturday week, promises to be one of the biggest in New Zealand racing in the past 20 years.

Ellerslie is ready.

Michael Guerin wrote his first nationally published racing articles while still in school and started writing about horse racing and the gambling industry for the Herald as a 20-year-old in 1990. He became the Herald’s Racing Editor in 1995 and covers the world’s biggest horse racing carnivals.