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David Conolly-Smith

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Ausgabe 460 vom Donnerstag, 23.03.2017

Turf racing resumes this weekend in Germany with meetings at Düsseldorf and Mannheim, both on Sunday. We have had to suffer four months of winter with only a handful of dreary race meetings on the two sand tracks at Neuss and Dortmund, consisting mainly of very low grade handicaps.

After a very cold January, we have had normal wet, windy but warmer conditions for the past two months, with reasonably good training possibilities. Cologne racecourse has built a new training track during the winter which has been praised by the trainers based at Germany´ s biggest training centre, headed by Peter Schiergen, Waldemar Hickst and Andreas Suborics, who has taken over the stable of the now-retired Andreas Löwe.  Three of the top trainers have their own facilities – Andreas Wöhler in the grounds of Gestüt Ravensburg near Gütersloh, Markus Klug at Gestüt Röttgen on the outskirts of Cologne, and Jean-Pierre Carvalho at Bergheim, west of Cologne. No problems are expected there, and most of the above-named have runners at Düsseldorf.

During the winter there were two main topics of conversation among racing fans here: the sale of bookmaker RaceBets to a Swedish gaming company for 40 million euros in December, and the extraordinary recent decision of Germany´s highest appeals panel in the case regarding last year´s Deutsches Derby.

As regards RaceBets: the German racing industry held a 39.52% shareholding in Racebets. They now come into an unexpected windfall – some ten million euros arealready available and several millions more will probably follow. At the same time, a significant annual six figure sum in dividends will be lost. So far no concrete proposals have been made as to how this money should best be spent. A round table event held last week in Hanover, attended by many leading racing figures, came to no conclusions. The racing industry clearly needs money; it was estimated at this meeting that the racecourses in Germany together make an annual loss of six million euros. Probably none of them makes a profit, and virtually none of them break even.

It is also highly that some leading racecourses will be closing this year. Frankfurt, ideally positioned in the centre of the country, has held no racing at all for about a year and a half and are involved in a lengthy and complicated legal battle with the city authorities, who want to turn the racecourse into a “centre of excellence” for the DFB (German Football Associaition). The race club has won some cases in court and lost others, it is impossible for an outsider to know how this situation will develop; however the chances of racing being staged again at the 150-year-old racecourse in the suburb of Niederrad seem slim. Bremen is also expected to close its doors this year – the city wants the land for housing. There is a lot of opposition to this plan, and the golf club in the centre of the track has a long-term lease, but again prospects are not great. There is a shadow hanging ovetr Neuss, which nowadays only stages moderate all-weather racing in the winter. The city here also has other plans for the area, but again the last word has not been spoken.

There is better news from the other all-weather track at Dortmund, which also has a good turf track and stages several good races, including the German St. Leger. The race club there is to sell a tract of land on the edge of the racecourse for six million euros, thus enabling them to pay off their debts and also to invest in the infrastructure and facilities. This will be at the expense of the training centre there, which will be closed down.  This is of course bad news for the trainers based there, some of them for decades, but it should be borne in mind that there used to be 200 horses in training at Dortmund and that now there are less than 30.

The situation regarding last year´s German Derby is very unsatisfactory. Isfahan (Lord of England) ran out a narrow winner in a three-way photo from Savoir Vivre (Adlerfliug) and Dschingis Secret (Soldier Hollow). The jockeys on the first two were subsequently fined by the stewards for whip abuse – both were adjudged to have hit their mounts nine times, while five is the maximum permitted under German rules. One would have thought that this was the end of the matter, but connections of the third horse have lodged  a series of objections. The first two – in front of the racecourse stewards and then the appeals committee – were turned down, but to everybody´s amazement a third appeal was insofar successful, in that the “higher” appeals panel ordered that the original hearing be reconvened under their opinion that, as whip abuse is against the rules of racing, the first two should be disqualified!

It is standard practice in all leading racing nations that in such cases the jockey is punished, but never that the horse should be disqualified. This latest ruling caused a storm of outrage, with Germany´s racing newspaper the Sport-Welt publishing a series of angry letters, all critical. This week the Sport-Welt published a lengthy and detailed analysis of the case by a highly respected lawyer and judge, himself a previous chairman of the “higher” appeals committee. He argues convincingly not only that the panel´s judgement is wrong, but that the whole appeal itself is irregular and invalid. The next hearing will take place on the Monday of the week after next – April 3rd- and it must devoutly be hoped that the result of the race will be confirmed in the order in which  the horses passed the post, and that no further action will be taken so that this dismal story will finally come to an end.

To end on a more positive note: the turf season looks set to start well, as Düsseldorf has an attractive card on Sunday. The main event, the listed Grand Prix Aufgalopp (a race previously always run at Cologne) has attracted a strong field, with Fair Mountain (Tiger Hill) the likely favourite; among other smart performances he finished third in the 2015 German Derby (not the race discussed above!). He must however give weight away to some useful rivals, including Nimrod (High Chaparral), San Salvador (Lord of England), Salve Venezia (Areion), as well as previous group race winners Eric (Tertullian) and Seismos (Dalakhani).

David Conolly-Smith

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