Legarto is likely to head to Yulong’s newly purchased stud farm in the Hunter Valley in New South Wales to be covered by its first-season stallion Devil Night in the spring.
Two other high-profile mares also formerly trained in Matamata fetched big prices on Tuesday.
Former NZ 1000 Guineas winner Captured By Love sold for A$1.5m while her stablemate Quintessa, who won the first Group 1 of the New Zealand season at Ellerslie last September, sold for A$800,000.
Both were originally bought, syndicated and raced in New Zealand by Te Akau, which earlier in the sale sold My Lips Are Sealed for A$180,000, that mare being purchased by New Zealand stud farm Rich Hill.
That means those four mares alone accounted for more than $6m in sales on Tuesday.
“It was a great price and it was hard to know what she was going to fetch,” said Legarto’s former trainer Ken Kelso, who watched her sale online.
“She is going to a great home and the exchange rate makes the price even sweeter.
“She has been a wonderful mare to us and it was very special to train her.”
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.