Breeding & Racing in Germany

Racing has been at a low level for the past ten days in Germany, with the attractive holiday resort of Bad Harzburg holding centre stage; they have mainly handicaps and maiden races there and no black type events (except for one listed race over hurdles run after these lines are written).  However we did have an interesting listed sprint race at Hoppegarten on Wednesday evening.  This was run over the straight five furlongs of the Berlin track and ended with a complete eclipse of the favourites. Four of the 2017 field reappeared, but while Daring Match (Call me Big) had won the race in both 2016 and 2017 and is generally regarded as Germany´s top performer over this specialist distance, he made little show this time and could only finish fifth behind the four-year-old filly Artistica (Areion), who held on from the fast-finishing Austrian-trained Pretorian (Sakhee´s Secret), who was only sixth last year.

The most interesting race in Germany last weekend was the Group Three Grosser Preis der Wirtschaft at Dortmund over 1750 metres, a race jointly sponsored by 59 local companies. Gestüt Röttgen´s homebred Degas (Exceed and Excel) won an exciting race, coming from last place with a late run to score by half a length from long-time leader Palace Prince (Areion), with Cashman (Soldier of Fortune), who had been runner-up here last year, a close third.

There were more International successes for the German racing and breeding industries last weekend. A Raving Beauty (Mastercraftsman), who last year was trained for owner-breeder Gestüt Karlshof to win a listed race at Hoppegarten and finish runner-up in an Italian Group One, was sold at the Arqana Breeding Stock Sale to her American owners for 225,000 euros and has won back far more than this amount by winning her first two races in the USA, notably last Saturday´s Group One Just A Game Stakes at Belmont Park; she is closely related to multiple group race winner Alianthus (Hernando), one of the best German milers this century.

There have been several outsider winners in this year´s European Guineas races, but this was not the case at Düsseldorgf last Sunday, when the Mark Johnson-trained Nyaleti (Arch) started as 23-10 favourite and ran out a very easy winner of the WEMPE 98^th German 1,000 Guineas, Bred in Ireland by SF Bloodstock, Nyaleti, who was running for the twelfth (!) time, had shown some very smart form at two, including a five lengths success in Ascot´s Princess Margaret Stakes, she was regarded as a live candidate for the Newmarket Guineas, but a couple of poor efforts in the spring caused her connections to scale down their expectations. However she showed better form when beating older fillies in a listed race at Goodwood and showed at Düsseldorf that she was right back to her best when accounting for a devent field of locally-trained fillies with the utmost ease.

The Berlin racecourse Hoppegarten celebrates its 150th birthday this year; it was officially opened on May 17th 1868 by the Prussian King Wilhelm I and his chancellor Otto von Bismarck. The racetrack was organized and funded by the  , an association of Prussian landowners, aristocrats and Berlin socialites. Within a few years, Germany had been united under Prussian leadership, Berlin was the capital of the German Reich, the King was now a Kaiser and Hoppegarten had quickly become the leading racecourse and training centre in the country. Well over 1,000 horses were in training, wealthy owner-breeders like the Oppenheims from Cologne and the Weinbergs from Frankfurt established large stables here.