Breeding & Racing in Germany

The German 1,000 Guineas, run last Sunday at Düsseldorf, ended with the expected victory of Hugo Palmer's Hawksmoor (Azamour); having been placed in two Group One races (including when six lengths behind Oaks winner Minding in last year´s Fillies´ Mile at Newmarket) she had the strongest credentials and justified her odds of 6-5. Thus both Germany´s early season classics have gone to Newmarket stables, following the success of Marco Botti´s Knife Edge (Zoffany) in the Mehl-Mülhens-Rennen three weeks earlier. Hawksmoor was in fact the fourth British-trained winner this century of the German 1,000 Guineas.

The feature of the German season so far has been the excellent form of trainer Markus Klug, who is based in the grounds of Gestüt Röttgen near Cologne airport. He had no runners at all during the all-weather season, but since turf racing started again five weeks ago he has saddled 14 winners from 40 starters for a strike rate of 35%, with another 20 placed. This is even more meritorious when one considers that he has frequently saddled two runners in the top events.

Last Sunday´s Spring Mile at Düsseldorf, the first German group race of 2016, ended in a convincing victory for Stall Ullmann´s Guiliani (Tertullian), who showed a nice turn of foot to master the hot favourite Lucky Lion (High Chaparral) inside the distance and score quite comfortably by three parts of a length. The first two are both past winners of Munich´s Grosser Dallmayr-Preis, but while Guiliani carried a three kilos penalty for winning Germany´s top ten furlong race last year, Lucky Lion, who has not won since his 2014 success in Munich, was actually receiving four kilos from the winner. This makes Guiliani´s win even more meritorious, and he has an obvious chance of repeating his Dallmayr-Preis  success, as that race in late July is now seen as his main mid-season target.

It´s a long time in racing terms between the end of March and the Deutsches Derby, to be run at Hamburg on July 10th, and the Preis der Diana (Oaks) at Düsseldorf four weeks later. It is also very unusual for serious candidates for those classics to be racing in March, but this is what happened over the long Easter weekend, when we saw promising entries for both events in action at Bremen on Good Friday, Düsseldorf on the Saturday, Hoppegarten on Sunday and Cologne on Monday. These are also the only two races in the German calendar for which there is a proper ante-post betting market, and amazingly the top three (according to some lists) in the betting for both these races were all out at the weekend.

There are currently 52 thoroughbred stallions based in Germany approved for covering duties in 2016, including four newcomers: Amaron, Arrigo, Earl of Tinsdal, Nutan und Polish Vulcano.