Breeding & Racing in Germany

The recent Hamburg Derby meeting had five days of racing, including the Group One German Derby, the Group Two Grosser Hansa-Preis, two more group races and two listed races – both traditional races with a long history- as well as a couple of valuable BBAG sales races and a large number of low level handicaps, most of which attracted large fields. With only just over 2,000 horses currently in training in Germany, it was clear that the meetings following on from Hamburg would suffer. Leipzig last Thursday, a rare weekday fixture, had six races, only one of which had more than 6 runners – and that was the worst race on the card with 1,750 euros to the winner.

We are halfway through the Hamburg Derby meeting, and the two top races will be run at the end of the week, Saturday´s Group Two Grosser Hansa-Preis and Sunday´s Group One IDEE 153^rd Deutsches Derby, both over 2400 metres, but more of them later.

The meeting has got off to a good start, helped by fine weather and betting turnover has been surprisingly good, much better than expected. For the last two years of course the track has been almost deserted for its only meeting of the year because of the covid pandemic, but with most restrictions now lifted, the crowds are back and we can certainly expect a huge crowd on Derby day.

In the opinion of this writer, there is no such thing as a “moral winner” in horse racing. The winner is the horse that crosses the line in first place, full stop. Of course there are plenty of unlucky losers, and one was certainly Maljoom (Gleneagles) in Tuesday´ s Group One St. James´s Palace Stakes, one of many highlights at this week´s Royal Ascot meeting. Maljoom was of special interest to German racegoers, as he had previously won the Mehl Mülhens-Rennen (German 2,000 Guineas) in good style. The round track at Ascot frequently causes problems for horses that need to be held up, such as Maljoom, who had come from a long way back when winning at Cologne. But as so often is the case, the field was very closely bunched as they came into the straight with all the jockeys wanting to grab the rail, and Maljoom was clearly one of the chief sufferers in the scrimmaging.

We have just had an eventful weekend and this coming weekend promises to be even more eventful. We can now look back on Baden-Baden's Spring Meeting and it must be said that the whole meeting can be regarded as a success. They were lucky with the weather, which except for a brief period of light rain on the Sunday morning, was perfect throughout, an essential ingredient for outdoor events. Crowds were good, some 30,000 over the three days, and the mood very positive. Betting turnover at 1.9 million euros was excellent by German standards – though still peanuts compared to many other racing countries, and well above expectations.

It has been another good week for the Schlenderhan-bred Adlerflug (In The Wings), but sadly a posthumous one, as the 2007 German Derby winner died suddenly of a heart attack at Easter last year after covering a mare. He was already on the way to becoming a sire of major international importance – he had had the first two in the 2020 German Derby, which had created quite a ripple - and he has since gone on to further glory. The winner of that race, In Swoop, went on to finish runner-up in the Arc, while the Derby second from 2020 Torquator Tasso won that Longchamp race last year, and is likely to make his 2022 debut next week at Baden-Baden. Adlerflug was champion sire in Germany for the past two seasons; this is all the more remarkable as his foreign winnings (e.g. 2.9 million euros for the Arc winner!) do not count in the German statistics.