Matt Kelso and lass out to restore New Zealand training pride

Alabama Lass, ridden by Craig Williams, won a A$500,000 race at Flemington in March. Photo / Pat Scala

Ken Kelso has a plan to right one of the wrongs of the transtasman thoroughbred racing season, which ends today.

And while he knows it won’t be easy to pull off, at least he knows he has done it before.

The Matamata horseman and his wife Bev train two of our best mares, Legarto and Alabama Lass, who will both return to the trials next week.

The two flyers will head to trials at Te Rapa on the August 9 raceday – part of a huge week for some of New Zealand’s best thoroughbreds, with highly-valued grass trials at Taupō on Monday and Te Rapa the next day, before the raceday trials four days later.

The Kelsos are happy with how both mares are progressing and each have a September 6 comeback to the races pencilled in – but though they both have a Group 1 target, they will be on different sides of the Tasman.

“Legarto is being aimed at the Proisir Plate at Ellerslie on September 6,” says Kelso.

“And Alabama Lass should have her first start back that day too but in the Moir Stakes at The Valley [Melbourne].

“So we are going to have a bit going on that day.”

The challenges include trying to restore New Zealand’s training pride after the season, which finishes today, is a modern-day rarity in that no solely New Zealand-trained horse won a Group 1 in Australia.

That could be in part due to the fact increased stake money at home kept some of our best and brightest here for almost their entire campaigns.

However, if you remove parochialism, it is hard to make a creditable list of New Zealand horses who would have been genuine winning chances in any Group 1 in Sydney or Melbourne.

Savaglee, who finished a brave second in the Group 1 Australian Guineas, clearly could have won at the highest level in Australia and taking a line through his form, Damask Rose could have too.

But after winning both the Karaka Millions Three-Year-Old and NZB Kiwi at home, the decision not to send her to Australia proved a masterstroke.

Damask Rose is now at Te Akau’s Cranbourne barn, along with Return To Conquer and La Dorada, so three of our absolute elite youngsters will campaign in Victoria this spring. Labelling them New Zealand-trained during this campaign would be a bit of a stretch, though.

Alabama Lass may actually be one of the few early spring flag flyers for New Zealand training, even though she was bred in Australia.

She won the highest-stake race by a New Zealand-trained horse in Australia this season when she took out the A$500,000 ($546,000) World Pool Classic over 1100m at Flemington on March 29, suggesting she is sharp enough for 1000m around The Valley.

“The Moir is in her aim as I think 1000m will suit her fresh-up and if she happens to race well there and come through it well, she could stay on for the Manikato [September 26], but that is likely to be stronger,” says Kelso.

Alabama Lass isn’t listed in the TAB market for the Moir, although fellow New Zealand females La Dorada and Bellatrix Star both are.

Kelso says both his stable stars will have two trials before their September 6 comebacks and he is happy to be taking Legarto to Ellerslie, even though he is not sure she is as suited to the new StrathAyr track there as Alabama Lass.

“It is a lovely track and we love taking horses there but she [Legarto] doesn’t seem to like it as much as Alabama Lass does.”

Legarto, of course, has already won a Group 1 for the Kelsos in Australia, having triumphed in the Australian Guineas in 2023.

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.