The English page: Highs for Wai Key Star and Soldier Hollow

For the third successive Sunday trainer Andreas Wöhler and his stable jockey Eduardo Pedroza took the big race in Germany when Stall Salzburg´s Wai Key Star (Soldier Hollow) ran out a very easy winner of the Grosser Audi Sport Preis, a ten furlongs event for three-year-olds previously known as the Fürstenberg-Rennen and staged in Baden-Baden; it was the only group race run in Germany last week, and Wöhler´s tenth group race success so far in 2016 (including three of the four Group Ones so far run in Germany).

Wai Key Star was not troubled to win by a long-looking four and a half lengths and gave a huge boost to the form of this year´s  Deutsches Derby, run six weeks ago at Hamburg on very heavy ground. On that occasion Wai Key Star looked a possible winner two furlongs out, but the combination of the going and the twelfth furlong found him out and he faded into fourth; this better ground and shorter trip was ideal, and he will probably run next in the Preis der Deutschen Einheit at Hoppegarten, also over ten furlongs, on October 3^rd , a German public holiday which this year unfortunately falls on a Sunday and also clashes with the “Arc.” At Hanover he finished well in front of two horses who had also finished behind him at Hamburg, and they are the only significant runners from the Derby to have run so far since that race.

It was also a great day for his sire Soldier Hollow, who stands at Gestüt Auenquelle but is still owned by Helmut von Finck´s Gestüt Park Wiedingen. Soldier Hollow, a son of In The Wings, brought off an unusual treble on Sunday as he also sired the winners of both two-year-old races run in Germany that day. He is clearly the top sire in Germany at present and looks almost certain to be champion sire. He is also the most expensive, with a fee listed as “private” but believed to be in the region of 20,000 euros. He has 31 yearlings in next week´s BBAG sale and they seem likely to fetch high prices.

The “Grosse Woche” at Baden-Baden, Germany´s most important race meeting of the year, starts on Saturday at the pretty Iffezheim racecourse on the northern edge of the Black Forest and a stone´s throw from the Rhine river which marks the border here between Germany and France. Wöhler can continue his winning run in Saturday´s main feature, the Preis der Sparkassen Finanzgruppe, also over ten furlomngs,but for four-year-ols and up. He hads two runners, the likely favourite Potemkin (New Approach), with Pedroza up, and his own Incantator (Areion) with Jozef Bojko in the saddle. Potemkin, who is part-owned by football star Klaus Allofs, is the best horse in the field and has won seven of his last nine starts. He has to concede weight all round however, so is no certainty, and indeed Incantator, a half-brother to this year´s German Derby winner Isfahan, looks dangerous in receipt of two kilos, as is Palace Prince (Areion), who has not run for over four months but was runner-up in last year´s German Derby.

However Wöhler will not be winning Sunday´s big race, the Goldene Peitsche (“golden whip”), Germany´s most prestigious sprint race, as he has withdrawn his expected runner – and last year´s winner – Shining Emerald (Clodovil), because of the likelihood of fast ground. The whole of Germany, and Baden-Baden in particular, is in the grip of a fierce heatwave at present and it is expected to last until Monday at least. Shining Emerald has a definite preference for some cut in the ground and the trainer made it clear some time ago that he would be pulled out if the going was not suitable.

In his absence the three-year-old Schäng (Contat) looks the main German hope, but he is another one who needs softer ground, so Daring Match (Call Me Big) may be the best of the locals. He is very consistent and was third here last year and fourth in 2014; however on both occasions he was behind French raider Son Cesio (Zafeen), one of seven foreign runners. Three of them are U.K.- trained, with the supplemented Markaz (Dark Angel) possibly the best of this trio. It looks a very open race, but another foreign success looks highly likely.

David Conolly-Smith