by Jordyn Bublitz
Loteria is set to make her Cambridge Raceway debut tonight in what looks to be a perfect stepping stone for the mare as she continues her return to racing.
The four-year-old daughter of Majestic Son, trained out of Clevedon by Sammy Kilgour, is a well-travelled campaigner. She began her career across the Tasman as a two-year-old in Australia before joining Sammy and her partner Josh Dickie on their move back to New Zealand. After a strong start to her racing career on kiwi soil, Sammy made the call to give her a decent spell to set her up for a big second half of 2025.
“She hadn’t had a decent break in a while, and I knew if we wanted to target these nicer mares’ races at the end of the year, we needed to turn her out” Kilgour said. “That’s why we opted to give her a lengthy spell, so that this time in, she can have a decent racing prep.”
Loteria resumed at Alexandra Park last Friday, her first race since December last year. Things didn’t quite go to script at the start, with the mare missing away and costing herself a considerable amount of ground, but there was plenty to like about the way she caught the field to finish in 6th.
“Despite her missing away it was still a really good run from her at Auckland and we’re really happy with her,” Kilgour said.
This evening, she steps out under the lights in Race 4, the Holmes & Co Family Silk Rd Northern Mares Ht2 Mobile Trot (6:59 p.m.)
Tonight’s dance marks her first look at Cambridge Raceway, and the conditions look ideal with her drawing barrier 1 over the 1700m mobile trip. The team is hoping the change to a mobile start will play to her strengths.
“I’m hopeful that the mobile start will help her out, we’re still struggling a bit with the standing starts” Kilgour said. “She just wants to run; she’s a Majestic Son out of a Sundon mare so it’s not really the recipe for standing still!”
With mobile starts few and far between for trotters, Kilgour spotted tonight’s race in the programme and saw a golden opportunity.
“I saw this race and thought ‘It’s a mobile and they don’t come along often, so we might as well give it a go’. She’s had mobile starts before and left the gate well, so fingers crossed we can navigate the start safely and go from there.”
If Loteria performs well tonight, the stable has one eye on next week’s $20,000 Silk Road Northern Trotting Mares Final.
“The final for this series is next week, so if we can run a good race and get into that it would be really awesome,” Kilgour said. “It’s just a week-by-week thing with her, we’ll see how she comes through her run and move from there.”