Autor:
David Conolly-Smith
TurfTimes:
Ausgabe 363 vom Donnerstag, 16.04.2015
In order to be of assistance to our growing number of readers from abroad, we are with immediate effect publishing in every issue of Turf Times an English page, giving in compact form all the latest racing and breeding news from Germany in English. It will be written by the well-known racing journalist David Conolly-Smith, who has lived in Germany for many years.
Germany´s leading older miler Amaron (Shamardal) kicked off the German pattern race season in fine style at Düsseldorf on Sunday by winning the Frühjahrsmeile for the second time. The six-year-old has now won a group race in each of the five seasons he has been in training, and has won first out four times. He was bred by the Swinburn´s Genesis Green Stud and was sold at Tattersalls as both a foal and yearling, each time realizing just over 100,000 guineas. He has now won over 300,000 euros, with 8 wins to his credit, seven of them in pattern races. His veteran trainer Andreas Löwe said – half seriously- “the aim is to win ten group races and then we shall retire him to stud.” The Prix du Muguet on May Day is next on the agenda. Amaron was backed down to 6/4 favourite and his supporters never had a moment´s anxiety, even though the winning margin over runner-up, Stall Ullmann's homebred Guiliani (Tertullian), was only a length. Guiliani however ran a good race in defeat after a long break, and looks likely to make his mark at this level again.
The complete race video, photos and full result here (under "Renndetails"):click!
As far as the future is concerned, the three-year-old races on the card were probably more significant, and especially the two winners in the colours of Jaber Abdullah trained by Andreas Wöhler. The filly Full of Beauty (Motivator) started off by taking the ten and a half furlongs race by a long looking two and a half lengths. The placed horses, Gestüt Röttgen´s homebred Anna Katharina (Kallisto) and the Schlenderhan-bred Ammerland-owned Fame (Monsun) are both quite highly regarded, so that this was certainly a smart performance. Full of Beauty is the fourth foal and also the fourth winner out of the Mizzen Mast mare Reaching Ahead, who is from an excellent Juddmonte family and is related to such Group One stars as Zafonic, Zamindar and Prohibit. Motivator supplies the necessary stamina, and the Italian Oaks is now the target.
The complete race: click!
Two hours later the colt Making Trouble (from the first crop of Paco Boy) won the listed race over seven and a half furlongs by the identical distance. While the rest of the field swung to the favoured outside rail, his jockey brought him with a long, sweeping run on the inside to score with quite a bit in hand. He was bred by Gestüt Brümmerhof, who had bought the mare in foal to this winner for 52,000 guineas at Tattersalls´ December sales. The daughter of Dr. Fong has an excellent pedigree, being a half-sister to Group One winner Ask, while if we go back a bit, we find the Queen´s celebrated dual classic winner Highclere as Making Trouble´s fourth dam; this is thus the family of Nashwan, Nayef, Unfuwain, Deep Impact and numerous other high class winners. Wöhler has so many promising three-year-olds in his Ravensberg stables that he may find it difficult to keep them all apart, but this one is surely destined for the Mehl-Mülhens-Rennen (German 2,000 Guineas), a race which Wöhler won for Jaber Abdullah back in 1994 with Royal Abjar.
The complete race: click!
Andreas Wöhler is also going to be strongly represented in this weekend's three-year-old races. Top event is the Group Three Schwarzgold-Rennen for fillies over a mile at Cologne, where seven of the eight runners are locally trained, the exception being Wöhler´s Fährhof homebred La Saldana (Fastnet Rock); the trainer nominated this one recently in a press survey as his best filly, so she has quite a lot to live up to. The opposition looks tough, including Bourree (Siyouni), winner of last October´s Preis der Winterkönigin, Gestüt Röttgen´s homebred Weichsel (Soldier Hollow and out of a Königsstuhl mare – not many of those left), beaten favourite for that race, as well as Gestüt Bona´s homebred Santa Lucia (Tertullian), who won Germany´s richest juvenile race last year and is closely related to Preis der Diana winner Salomina (Lomitas). This race should be highly informative, as should also be the two three-year-old maidens on the card, both contested by well-bred runners from top stables. The top-rated German two-year-old filly of 2014 however was French-bred Moonee Valley (Aqlaam), a group race winner at Deauville last year; she was well beaten in the Prix de la Grotte last week, but trainer Mario Hofer has reported that she had come into season just before the race, so that performance can probably be ignored. She is still on course for the Poule d´Essai des Pouliches.
The complete race: click!
Another highly interesting race for three-year-olds will be run at Munich on Sunday. Despite the modest prize-money the seven runners here include two of the early favourites for this year´s German Derby: Shimrano (Monsun), bred by Brümmerhof but racing in the colours of Australia Racing, and Fährhof´s homebred Quasillo (Sea The Stars), trained by Wöhler. The latter is making his debut, but Shimrano was one of the most impressive German two-year-old winners seen last year in Germany. He is trained by Hanover-based Irishman Paul Harley, who is flying his nephew Martin over to ride. Harley had however bad news of another top three-year-old, Frau Ina Zimmermann's Liberry Gold (Adlerflug), who won his maiden last year by seventeen (!) lengths. He is injured and will miss the whole of the 2015 season.
The complete race: click!
However there is better news from Berlin, where the racecourse at Hoppegarten has been one of the major success stories in German racing these past few years, ever since London-based fund manager Gerhard Schöningh took it over in 2008. Schöningh announced this week that he has exercised his option to buy the Neuenhagen training grounds, just over a mile from the racecourse, from the BVVG, the German government´s privatisation agency for land previously owned by the East German GDR. The Neuenhagen training grounds include three turf tracks, together over five miles in length, and a sand track of just over two mlles. Together with the Bollensdorf training centre, also owned by Schöningh, this means that he now has the racecourse and the entire historic training centre in the Hoppegarten area. Hoppegarten and its training centres were the headquarters of the German racing industry for three-quarters of a century up to the second world war and Schöningh´s aim is to restore them to their former glory. Among the many superstars trained there was the Schlenderhan filly Schwarzgold, still regarded by many experts as the best German racehorse of all time, and commemorated in Cologne´s race on Sunday.
