Racing: Levante on way home if in-foal plan works out

Levante. Photo / Trish Dunell

One of the superstars of New Zealand racing could return home after looking certain to be lost to Australia.

Group 1-winning sprinting star Levante was retired to stud in April but was a notable absentee from last week’s broodmare sale on the Gold Coast, even though she was scheduled to head there for public auction.

Her breeder Phillip Brown, of Ancroft Stud, instead bought out most of Levante’s other owners, with one retaining a small share before Brown then struck a deal with Australian breeding giant Arrowfield Stud.

That will see Levante visit Arrowfield’s champion stallion Snitzel in the spring and while she is likely to visit an Arrowfield stallion, possibly Snitzel again, the following season, Brown hopes to return her to New Zealand at some stage.

“I’d love to think she could be in foal to a top stallion in a few years and living in my front paddock,” says Brown.

“If we had sold her on the Gold Coast we had no control over where she went next and even if she raced on, and I didn’t want that.

“She is starting to show the signs of wear and tear you would expect from a top horse her age so I wanted her safely in foal.

“John Messara from Arrowfield contacted me and we are really happy to have her based there for at least a couple of years and under the agreement we have with John all her foals will go through the sales.”

Levante having a majority ownership in New Zealand increases the chances she can return home and even be bred to a domestic stallion and have her progeny sold at Karaka in the future.

While that is also the case with Probabeel and Roch ‘N’ Horse, many of the other outstanding New Zealand racemares in recent years have been sold, mostly snapped up by Australian buyers.

With so many huge studs and stallion syndicates in Australia, the market for elite mares has skyrocketed and that has seen Melody Belle, Avantage, Entriviere, Jennifer Eccles, Amarelinha and just last week Coventina Bay sold to Australian stud farms.

Most of them were owned by syndicates so had to be sold at public auction to determine market value, and breeding from a mare as a syndicate is a potential nightmare few would want.