Royally bred three-year-old Twain couldn’t have been more impressive on debut at Tauranga on Sunday, winning the Saddlery Warehouse Cambridge & Tauranga (1200m) for John Bell.

The son of Per Incanto is out of high-performing race mare Fleur de Lune, who had a glittering career on the track highlighted by her victory in the Gr.1 Railway Stakes (1200m) in 2013.

In the shades of his star dam, Twain was eye-catching when successful at the trials before kicking off his career on Sunday, where his pedigree and prior performance were noted by punters backing him in $3.20 favouritism.

Benefitting from the three-kilogram claim of in-form apprentice Triston Moodley, Twain was posted three-wide early forcing him to work forward and take over the pace making role from Jethro Tull. Despite this, the gelding cruised into the home straight and swiftly put a margin on the remainder of the field, pulling away from Saint Brigid and Johnny Rondo at the finish to score by 2 ½ lengths.

Bell, who prepares Twain out of his Cambridge stable, was pleased to see his expectations met by the promising three-year-old.

“If he didn’t do that, I’m a bad judge. I definitely expected that from him today,” Bell said.

“Triston was most impressed with him as has anyone else that has ridden him.

“He has a few issues and my team at home have done a huge amount of work looking after him and they deserve this win, putting him on the tracks that suit him in his work. He’s a work in progress, and that’s why we have put him out and brought him back in.

“We’ll see how he comes through today, we’re a bit apprehensive in giving him too much work so we’ll just put the work into him for each race as we see fit.

“He’s pretty special.”

Fleur de Lune was bred and co-owned by the late Ada Parnwell and the Stravinsky mare’s transition into broodmare life has resulted in two foals to race by Per Incanto, the other a colt named Forte who raced in Hong Kong.

Twain was bred by Parnwell’s daughter Elizabeth Martin, who entrusted the gelding in the care of Bell.

“He originally came to us from Elizabeth Martin’s Cambridge Thoroughbred Lodge where he was spelling to do some work with and possibly market,” Bell said.

“As I say, he’s had his issues otherwise he may have gone to Australia or Hong Kong.

“I did a lot of work for Elizabeth’s parents and we have a number of horses for her now. They are mostly related to Fleur De Lune, and another one named Spanish Lad who will possibly get a start at Cambridge on Wednesday.

“They have some nice young horses and they’ve gone to good stallions, so they deserve every bit of success as they put a lot of effort into their horses.”