Million-dollar mare Legarto’s sister shows early promise

New Zealand trainers Ken and Bev Kelso will be hoping lightning can strike twice.

The Matamata conditioners unleashed promising juvenile Latoya to win over 800m at the Avondale trials on Tuesday, with the Proisir filly showing she has inherited at least some of the family ability.

The two-year-old’s sister is the star mare Legarto, a five-time Group One winner for the Kelsos who recently sold for $2.8 million as a broodmare at the Magic Millions National Sale on the Gold Coast, and while Ken Kelso is not one to get too far ahead of himself, he is pleased with what he has seen from Latoya to date.

“She’s a good doer,” Kelso said. “She’s got a little bit of sass about her and I suppose in some way she’s similar to Legarto, but she’s a smaller version. We were pleased with her trial today and she improved a lot from her first hit-out at Waipa.

“We were a bit puzzled by her first trial. Opie (Bosson) had been working her and jumped her out, and we expected it to go well. She was very slow away. She turned her head in the barrier and they went like cut cats and ran her off her feet.

“We were expecting an improvement today and she certainly did that.”

The Warwick Jeffries bred and raced filly will likely make her raceday debut in the coming weeks, although her conditioners are critical of New Zealand’s two-year-old programming, which sees juveniles largely pitted against older rivals at this time of year.