The English page - Say Good Bye well bought

Owing to various religious holidays, during which gambling is forbidden, Germany has only one day´s racing in the second half of November and that took place on the Wednesday of this week at Dresden. The fixture, traditionally held on Atonement Day, is the penultimate turf meeting of the year in Germany, we now have only Boxing Day (weather permitting) at Mülheim to look forward to, as the racing on the sand tracks at Neuss and Dortmund is, with all due respect, not very inspiring.

Dresden also staged the last black type race of the German season, an eleven furlongs affair with a decent field of 12 runners, including two each from Poland and the Czech Republic. In the end however the two horses with the highest ratings dominated the finish, and they were both trained in Cologne. Say Good Buy (Showcasing), trained by Henk Grewe, made the running, but was overtaken early in the straight by the Czech-trained Boomboom Kiss (Kentucky Dynamite) and by local hope Fort Good Hope (Santiago), but he fought back gamely to lead again in the closing stages and just hold off the late challenge of Peter Schiergen-trained Nikkei (Pivotal). Say Good Buy, bred by Fährhof, is closely related to the smart Silvano (Lomitas), one of Fährhof´s best-ever performers and now a top sire in South Africa. He was well bought (as his name suggests!) at 36,000 euros at BBAG`s October Sale as a yearling and runs in the colours of Cologne race club president Eckhard Sauren. He started favourite here after his good second place to Hungarian star Nancho (Tai Chi) in Baden-Baden last month, form which was boosted when the latter went on to win the Group One Grosser Preis von Bayern. Say Good Buy has been entered in the Qatar Derby just before Christmas, but is not certain to run there.

This was yet another feather in the cap of 36-year-old Henk Grewe, who has had a fantastic season. He is certain to be Germany´s champion trainer for the first time, both by number of winners and almost certainly by winnings as well. He has trained 29 2yo winners this year, an impressive figure when one considers the number of races for this age group in Germany. The German record for 2yo winners is 31, established by the great Heinz Jentzsch in an era when there was much more racing here than there is now and Grewe is hoping he can set a new record.

The Dresden fixture was also noteworthy for two races for this age group, in which Grewe had no runners. Instead they were both won by juveniles trained by Markus Klug, Grewe´s predecessor as German champion trainer.  Both winners were fillies owned and bred by Gestüt Görlsdorf and both were daughters of Sea The Moon (Sea The Stars), who won the German Derby in spectacular style for Görlsdorf in 2014. Sea The Moon stands at Kirsten Rausing´s Lanwades Stud in Newmarket and has done really well with his first two crops on the ground. His son Wonderful Moon – trained by Grewe- is officially rated Germany´s top 2yo of 2019 after his 12 lengths victory in the Group Three Herzog von Ratibor-Rennen, he has a Group Two winner in Ireland and last week he also had a Group Two winner over hurdles.

Both of Sea The Moon´s winners were making their debuts and won in promising style. Both are out of Sadler´s Wells mares and are entered in the 2020 Group One Preis der Diana (German Oaks). They are certainly well enough bred, Snow being closely related to Derby and Arc winner Lammtarra, while Moon a Lisa is from the immediate family of Irish 2,000 Guineas winner Saffron Walden and other Group One performers. They can give their owner-breeder and trainer something to dream about in the coming winter months. They were also both ridden by Maxim Pecheur, who looks certain to finish runner-up in the German jockeys´ table for this year. He has currently seven winners  less than the leader Bauyrzhan Murzabeyev, but with only six racing days left it will be extremely difficult to close the gap. However Pecheur has had an excellent year with well over one hundred winners, if you include France, Italy and Belgium. Despite his French-sounding name, he is in fact German and indeed the only German-born jockey in the top nine. Both Pecheur and Kazakhstan-born Murzabayev intent to ride until the end of the year in Germany, so it could still be close, but the latter has an obvious advantage.

There is no more racing this month in Germany, so next week we shall take  a closer look at the statistics for 2019, including the results of the 44 pattern races run in Germany this year,  19 of which were won by foreign raiders, ten of them trained in the U.K.

David Conolly-Smith