Racing: Legarto heads strong Kiwi entry in Australian Cup

Legarto will start in the Australian Cup at Flemington.

More Kiwi glamour girls are set to join winning machine Imperatriz in Australia this weekend as New Zealand faces a rare Group 1 domination in Sydney.

And Matamata trainer Ken Kelso will be hoping that can also extend to Melbourne.

While Imperatriz has been the star of the Victorian summer, Kelso’s mare Legarto will head there this Saturday to try and extend the New Zealand success in the A$3 million Australian Cup at Flemington.

That will mean returning to the scene of her greatest triumph in the Australian Guineas last season, and Kelso, who trains the 4-year-old with wife Bev, says Legarto is ready to show her best back on a big track.

“She is very well and hasn’t missed a beat since Ellerslie,” he says of her last-start second in the Bonecrusher New Zealand Stakes. “She worked well on the weekend and will head over Wednesday.”

Expat jockey Mick Dee, who partnered Legarto in that Australian Guineas winner, will also be on in Saturday’s weight-for-age 2000m in which she meets two other Kiwi breds in favourites Mr Brightside and Pride Of Jenni.

The fourth favourite is Atishu,

so Kiwi-breds are set to dominate Victoria’s second-equal biggest weight-for-age 2000m race.

But even shorter in the market will be Cambridge filly Orchestral when she makes her Sydney debut in the Vinery Stakes at Rosehill on Saturday.

The last-start New Zealand Derby winner is $2.20 to win the Group 1 her stablemate Prowess won last season, even though she meets VRC Oaks winner Zardozi, with James McDonald choosing to ride Orchestral.

Should Orchestral win, she will then more than likely head to the A$1m ATC Oaks at Randwick on April 13, for which she is already the favourite.

With Imperatriz having won the William Reid in Melbourne as a hot favourite last Saturday and certain to start favourite in the A$3m TJ Smith at Randwick on April 6, that raises the possibility of a Kiwi mare starting favourite and winning a Group 1 race for four consecutive weekends in Australia.

Meanwhile, the females will be the stars of the show at a surprise Ellerslie meeting on Saturday.

The meeting was originally to have been held at Te Aroha, but with that still undergoing work, it has been moved to Ellerslie and will host the $400,000 New Zealand Thoroughbred Breeders’ Stakes for the fillies and mares.

It will also host the Entain Pearl Series Final.

The following week, Trentham will hold the transferred Awapuni meeting, with five black type races, including the last Group 1 of the season, the Sires’ Produce.

Markets for all those Group 1 races remain open with the TAB.

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.