The English page - looking back 2016

There was plenty of good news for the German racing and breeding industries in 2016 – but plenty of bad news as well. On the credit side – literally! - came the news earlier this month that German bookmaker RaceBets, the official betting partner of German Racing, has been sold to the Swedish online gaming giant Betsson for 34 million euros (with a further 6 million possibly to follow). The German racing industry, desperately short of cash, owns 39.52% of RaceBets, so is going to collect an unexpected windfall of some 13 million euros once the deal is completed.

A full session of the Direktorium is due in mid-January and the question of how to spend this money wisely is bound to be one of the main talking points. Certainly one proposal will be for the upgrading of one of Germany´s two all-weather tracks, at Neuss and Dortmund, which are currently barely fit for purpose. The excellent tracks in the U.K. and France show what can be done. Neuss already has other problems, as the city council is very critical of the race club´s plans. However there seems to be little danger that racing will finish there, while two tracks seem certain to cease to exist soon: Frankfurt and Bremen. The former staged no racing at all in 2016 and the city wants the land for an “excellence centre” for the DFB (German Football Association); although the actions of the city have sometimes seemed to be of dubious legality, this is a political rather than a legal issue and it appears highly likely that 150 years of thoroughbred racing at this important central location has come to an end. The situation at Bremen is much clearer, the city owns the property beyond any doubt and wants to use the land for housing; Bremen has four fixtures scheduled for the spring of 2017, but the June 18^th meeting, featuring the swb Derby-Trial (ironically, sponsored by the city´s utilities) is expected to be last ever at this popular North German track. Some other racecourses are rumoured to be in trouble – certainly hardly any of them make any sort of profit – but the loss of Frankfurt and Bremen would be very bitter. One of the main features of the discussions  to take place next month will be proposals to strengthen the professional management of German racing with a new structural reform, which would appear to be sorely needed.

On the racing front, it was also a mixed year, and a very long dry spell did not help matters. As luck would have it, one of the few wet spells was during the Derby week at Hamburg, where it rained heavily every day and the Deutsches Derby was run on very bad ground. The race produced the most exciting and controversial finish of the season, with only inches separating the first three home. The stewards fined the jockeys of the winner Isfahan (Lord of England), owned by Darius Racing, trained by Andreas Wöhler and ridden by Dario Vargiu, and the runner-up Savoir Vivre (Adlerflug), ridden by Freddy Tylicki, for overuse of the whip. This resulted in some very negative press comment and also provoked the connections of third-placed Dschingis Secret (Soldier Hollow) into launching a string of objections, which are still five months later not fully dealt with. It also caused the Direktorium to increase drastically the punishments for jockeys falling foul of the whip rules, which are now among the most stringent anywhere.

Unfortunately the jinx which seems to hit German Derby winners also affected Isfahan, who did not run again and has now been retired to stud. However the form of the race still reads well; Savoir Vivre went on to win the Grand Prix de Deauville and finished a respectable eighth (and best three-year-old) in the Arc, while Dschingis Secret won the Italian St.Leger and sixth-placed  Our Last Summer won the valuable Scandic Norsk Derby.

The Derby was also a great result for his trainer, as Wöhler and his wife Susi are the breeders of Isfahan. In fact, for most of the season Wöhler could do no wrong. He also trained the winner of the Preis der Diana, Gestüt Wittekindshof´s homebred Serienholde (Soldier Hollow); she was well beaten on her two subsequent starts and has also now been retired. Arguably the best filly in the race was Darius Racing´s Irish-bred Parvaneh (Holy Roman Emperor), who ran on strongly from a bad draw and later won a Group Two in excellent style at Baden-Baden; Parvaneh was the sales-topper at a million euros when sold to James Delahooke at the Arqana Vente d´Elevage earlier this month.

Back to Andreas Wöhler, whose real masterstroke this year was his success in bringing the six-year-old Protectionist (Monsun) back to top form after a disastrous year in Australia, where he had remained following his impressive success for the trainer in the 2014 Melbourne Cup. Protectionist won his first three races in 2016 very easily, culminating in the Grosser Preis von Berlin. Unfortunately his only later start, in Canada, did not work out so well, and he has also been retired to stud. He will stand for a fee of 6,500 euros at Gestüt Röttgen and looks the most exciting of the new German stallions for 2017. Wöhler has already shown a positive reaction by planning to send him the dam of Isfahan. It was also another great posthumous year for his sire Monsun, unquestionably the most successful stallion ever in German racing history; for the third time in four years he sired the winner of the Melbourne Cup and he had black type performers galore all over the racing world.

Wöhler himself saddled another Group One winner late in the year when Potemkin (New Approach) capped a fine season when taking the Premio Roma. The Germans, rather illogically, call their champion trainer the one who has won the most races, rather than the most prizemoney, and in that respect Wöhler is runner-up in the statistics to Markus Klug, who also had an excellent season. In fact his stable´s winnings of 1.3 million euros exceeded his 2014 total, when he won the Derby and was champion trainer for the first time. Wöhler´s  total domestic earnings came to almost 1.9 million and he has been champion three times by number of winners, but much more often by winnings. Peter Schiergen in third place had another good season, with Nightflower´s (Dylan Thomas) second Preis von Europa the highlight, while further down the trainers list we find the names of Jean-Pierre Carvalho, trainer of Savoir Vivre and Group One winner Guignol (Cape Cross) among others, and Hans-Jürgen Gröschel, a 74-year-old veteran who announced his impending retirement but quickly changed his mind when he found one of the stars of the season in his yard: this was Iquitos (Adlerflug), winner of the Grosser Preis von Baden, still Germany´s most prestigious event, and later a lucrative seventh in the Japan Cup. Iquitos had easily defeated Nightflower at Baden-Baden but both of them had earlier been outclassed by Protectionist.

Darius Racing, the nom de course of Munich businessman Dr. Stefan Oschmann and his wife Sharpar, were the leading German owners of 2016; they are relative newcomers to the top level, but had an excellent year, headed by the Derby success of Isfahan. Wittekindshof, Röttgen, Stall Ullmann and Stall Nizza then follow in that order. While the four last-named mainly race their own homebreds, Stiftung Gestüt Fährhof is now very commercially run and sell most of their best youngsters at Baden-Baden, where this year´s BBAG sale set new records. Fährhof-breds had a very good year and the north German stud topped the breeders´ statistics by a clear margin from Röttgen and Wittekindshof.

Soldier Hollow was champion sire for the first, but almost certainly not the last time. He had a brilliant season and his progeny´s earnings of almost 1.3 million euros are very impressive considering the level of prize-money in Germany. His two-year-olds did extremely well so that he has good chances of following up in 2017. His main rival could be Adlerflug, like him a son of In The Wings; the 2007 German Derby winner was the stallion success story of 2016, with Iquitos (from his second crop) and Savoir Vivre (from his third) the highlights. He was fourth in the sires´ list behind Areion, who had another very solid year with over a million euros, and Lord of England (thanks to Isfahan`s Derby). Next year we shall see the first crop runners of some very interesting stallion prospects, notably Maxios, Pastorius and Reliable Man, and also Dabirsim, who is now based in France.

Regarding the 2017 classics, it seems much too early to make any sort of prognosis as traditionally German-breds are slow developers and do not necessarily show their true ability as juveniles. However Wöhler has another live Derby prospect in Langtang (by the ill-fated Campanologist), winner of the Preis des Winterfavoriten – the same race taken by Isfahan last year. He was bred by Fährhof and owned by the stud in partnership with football star Klaus Allofs – the same partnership that struck at the highest level this year with Potemkin. The top two-year-old filly was Röttgen´s homebred Well Spoken (Soldier Hollow), winner of the Preis der Winterkönigin.

Of the 2016 three-year-olds set to stay in training, the best prospect is almost certainly Savoir Vivre, and of the older horses his stable companion Guignol as well as Iquitos and Potemkin. These are all genuine Group One performers and the first three all mile and a half specialists. One has to be an optimist in this business, so we shall make a daring prediction and hope to see another German Arc winner in 2017!

David Conolly-Smith