The purchase of two-time stakes winner Live Drama (NZ) (Ghibellines) for $75,000 on gavelhouse.com this week means that breeder Warwick Jeffries is about to enhance his broodmare band with two of the South Island’s best-performed racemares from recent seasons.
Jeffries won last season’s New Zealand Small Breeder of the Year Award, which is restricted to breeders with a broodmare band numbering five or fewer. From such small numbers, he produced multiple Group One-winning star Legarto (NZ) (Proisir) and fellow Group One winner Dark Destroyer (NZ) (Proisir).
Jeffries also bred Legarto’s half-sister Emanon (NZ) (Burgundy), who has won 11 races in the South Island while on lease to Orari-based trainer Lionel Dobbs and his wife Janine Young.
Emanon will return north to Jeffries’ Tauranga property later this autumn, where she will take up residence alongside her former racecourse rival Live Drama.
“Having purchased Live Drama, and with Emanon’s lease running out in May, it means that two of the best-performed South Island racemares from the last few years will be coming back to our place,” Jeffries said. “They competed against each other a number of times and won a total of 20 races between them, and now they’ll be sharing a paddock and starting their broodmare careers together.”
Jeffries was impressed by the racetrack performances of Live Drama, who turned her $8,500 price tag at the 2018 New Zealand Bloodstock South Island Sale into more than $330,000 in prize-money.
Live Drama’s high-class career spanned six seasons, winning on debut as a two-year-old in May of 2019 and placing at Group Three level as a seven-year-old in November.
She had a total of 35 starts for nine wins, 12 placings and $332,340 in stakes for her big group of owners. Her best wins came in the Group Three South Island Thoroughbred Breeders’ Stakes (1600m) and Listed Great Easter Handicap (1400m), while her eight black-type placings included the Group Three Canterbury Breeders’ Stakes (1400m), White Robe Lodge WFA (1600m) and Stewards’ Stakes (1200m).
“Having just retired with a 97 rating, she was a very good racehorse,” Jeffries said. “She won her only start as a two-year-old quite comfortably, so she showed a lot of natural speed.
“She won nine races including two at stakes level, and she also had another eight stakes placings, and only a select few mares achieve a career like that.
“She’s by Ghibellines, who is a very well-bred stallion and in my view will become a successful broodmare sire in time.
“I’ve got a couple of stallions in mind that I think could be suitable matings for her, and one of those is obviously Proisir, who I’m a shareholder in. But there’s others that will be worth considering as well. I thought she was a good mare to buy, and I’m looking forward to breeding from her.”
