Breeding & Racing in Germany

We are now halfway through the „Grosse Woche“ at Baden-Baden, Germany´s most important meeting, and the week began with the success of Stall Salzburg´s Wai Key Star (Soldier Hollow)., who just got up in a desperate finish to defeat the favourite Va Bank (Archipenko) by a short head in the ex-Spreti-Rennen, a result which must have been bitter for the latter´s trainer Andreas Wöhler, who had Wai Key Star in his care last year. Stall Salzburg, the nom de course of big owner Hans-Gerd Wernicke, now has all their horses trained by 30-year-old Sarah Steinberg in Munich and she is having a tremendous season with an excellent strike rate. Both her runners at the meeting so far have won and she has two more interesting prospects in the group races here on Sunday.

There were two listed races in Germany last weekend, very different in character. In Hannover, only five runners lined up for a race over a mile and a half in which Stall Lucky Owner's Walsingham (Campanologist) had plenty in hand on official ratings, having run several good races previously in top company. The Röttgen-bred four-year-old duly won with the greatest of ease, with the French-trained Amaranthe (Mastercraftsman) running on for second place, but never with a serious chance of winning.

When Rüdiger Alles (German International Bloodstock/ IVA) paid 880,000 guineas in 1993 for the Niarchos-bred filly Wells Whisper (Sadlers Wells) on behalf of the Ullmann/ Schlenderhan stable, hopes were clearly very high. This was a huge price for those days, but Wells Whisper came with an extremely strong catalogue page. The dam Whakilyric (Miswaki) had not only been a very useful performer and Group One-placed in her racing career, but she had already bred several top notch performers, notably the young filly´s own brother Johann Quatz (winner of the Prix Lupin, third in the Arlington Million and subsequently runner-up in the Breeders´ Cup Mile) as well as her half-brother Hernando (Niniski), winner that year of the Prix du Jockey Club and runner-up in the Irish Derby and Arc.

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.