Bev Kelso, who trained Legarto, dies at 80

Bev Kelso has died aged 80, the Matamata trainer passing on Saturday (LOVERACING.NZ, Breednet). She came from the Bay of Plenty and was a competitive showjumper in her youth, which is where she met her husband Ken. She took out her trainer’s licence in 1977 and went into partnership with him a year later, and the two of them ran a boutique stable at Matamata for five decades (LOVERACING.NZ). Seven Group One winners came out of it: Xanadu, Bounding, Love Dance, Perfect Fit, Envoy, Levante and Legarto (LOVERACING.NZ, Breednet). Levante won four at the top level and Legarto five, the last two of them the Group 1 Herbie Dyke Stakes and the Group 1 Bonecrusher New Zealand Stakes in her final starts last season, after which she was named Horse of the Year at the Matamata Racing Awards (Breednet). Owner Philip Brown, who raced horses with the stable for years, said she was “a terrific woman and loved her horses. Her and Ken were a complete item together” (LOVERACING.NZ). Her funeral will be held at Matamata racecourse at 1pm on Monday 14 September (LOVERACING.NZ, Breednet).

America

Ways and Means won the $500,000 Grade 1 Ballerina Stakes over seven furlongs at Saratoga on Travers day by five and a half lengths, running 1:22.05 from Kilwin and Beauty Reigns (TDN). The five-year-old Practical Joke mare is trained by Chad Brown for Klaravich Stables and was ridden by Flavien Prat, and the win was her sixth from seven starts at the track, after the Grade 1 Test in 2024 and the Grade 2 Bed o’ Roses in June (TDN). “I was traveling well behind the pace, and when I got to the turn I didn’t want to move too soon, but she naturally came with me and was wanting to go,” Prat said (TDN). Brown put it simply: “She’s had an amazing career and she was able to come through once again and shine on one of the biggest days of the year” (TDN).

Europe

Nina Carberry rode Ndaawi to win the Pat Smullen Charity Race over a mile and a half at the Curragh on Saturday by six lengths, the retired jockey, now an MEP and a children’s author, saying afterwards that “I got there a mile too soon” (Racing Post). The 19 riders raised about 120,000 euros for the Pat Smullen Fund and Cancer Trials Ireland, on top of the 1.2 million the fund had already reached before this year’s raceday (Racing Post). The day was framed around a new pancreatic cancer drug, daraxonrasib, with Professor Grainne O’Kane quoted as calling it “probably the most historic moment for patients with pancreatic cancer” and saying “we are now entering an absolute new era for treating patients with this disease” (Racing Post). A world record was set alongside it, 281 riders in yellow jerseys on the cycle, past the 270 set in 2015 (Racing Post).