Breeding & Racing in Germany

It was generally expected that one of the three U.K.-trained runners would win last Sunday´s Group One Grosser Dallmayr-Preis at Munich, Germany´s best ten furlongs race. Saeed bin Suroor´s Benbatl (Dubawi) and Ed Walker´s Stormy Antarctic (Stormy Atlantic) had finished first and second last year, and this time Stormy Antarctic was back to try and go one better. He was accompanied by David Menusier´s Danceteria (Redoute´s Choice) and Mark Johnston´s Matterhorn (Raven´s Pass), who had met earlier in the season in the Brigadier Gerard Stakes at Sandown; Matterhorn had come out on top then, but Danceteria had showed improved form afterwards, winning La Coupe at Longchamp and then running fourth to Enable in the Eclipse Stakes. As Enable had won the King George the previous day at Ascot, a fact of which all racegoers were aware, he looked the likeliest of the foreign raiders.

It was clear that in the week following  the German Derby meeting at Hamburg there would be a bit of a lull, and last weekend the only black type races run were the listed Grosser bwin Sommerpreis over 1900 metres at Leipzig and the listed BBAG Diana Trial at Mülheim over 2000 metres.

The Leipzig race went to the seven-year-old gelding Sun at Work (Areion), bred by Fährhof, owned by Elisabeth Kindrat, trained in Bremen by Werner Haustein and who made all the running under Maxim Pecheur. The 28-year-old jockey, who in April married Lena-Maria Mattes, herself previously a successful amateur jockey, is having a fantastic season and rode a six-timer on the day. He is attached to the leading Markus Klug stable and has not looked back since winning the Deutsches Derby on Windstoss in 2017.

We are now four-sevenths of the way through Hamburg´s Derby meeting and have seen convincing winners of the main events so far. Last Saturday, the opening day, saw the 5yo mare Abadan (Samum) run out a ready winner of the listed Langer Hamburger over two miles. She is trained by Henk Grewe in Cologne and stable jockey, the young Frenchman Lukas Delozier, rode a waiting race on the grey but found himself boxed in early in the straight; luckily there was room for him to switch and Abadan quickened nicely to speed past the frontrunning Berghain (Medicean) and win easily by a length. This was the best career performance by the winner, and indeed her first black type success; she has changed hands several times, but this was a welcome change of luck for owners  Dr. Stefan Oschmann and his wife Sharpar, who race under the name of Darius Racing.

The period between the end of Baden-Baden´s Spring Meeting and the start of Hamburg´s Derby Week, which starts on the Saturday of next week, is always rather quiet. There were only two black type races in the past week, a listed race for 3yo fillies over 2100 metres at Düsseldorf, which ended with one of the most exciting finishes of the year, and then a Group Three over 1400 metres at Dresden, the first ever group race run at this track. From the German point of view the race was a disaster with a French-trained winner whose official rating would not normally entitle him to be considered seriously for any black type event, let alone a group race. This was Brian Ryan, a 4yo gelding by Finjaan, who now stands in Morocco;  Brian Ryan at least had fitness on his side, as he had already run ten times this year, winning five times, but all at a very low level.

Last week´s Spring Meeting at Baden-Baden can be classed as a success, partly as a result of a sudden change in the weather. On the Tuesday it was still cold and wet, by Thursday it was sunny and very warm, and it got hotter every day. For horses that wanted soft ground conditions were not ideal, although strangely enough the two that dominated the Group Two Badener Meile on the opening day are both regarded as soft ground specialists, French-trained The Revenant (Dubawi) and Irish-trained Imaging (Oasis Dream).