The English page - In Swoop ticks all the boxes

In Swoop won the IDEE 151st Deutsches Derby: Torquator Tasso placed second. Both are sons of Adlerflug. www.galoppfoto. de - Frank SorgeLast week´s English page ended with the words: “(In Swoop) has the ideal pedigree… Schlenderhan has won the German Derby 18 times; number 19 could now be coming up and this runner ticks most of the boxes.” Now, with the benefit of hindsight, we know that In Swoop (Adlerflug) in fact ticked all the boxes and he finished best of all to win last Sunday's IDEE 151^st Deutsches Derby to give Gestüt Schlenderhan their 19^th winner of the race as owner and 20^th as breeder, a proud record indeed.

Stamina was clearly one of the main factors in this success, and our suspicions that several of the leading candidates, notably favourite Wonderful Moon (Sea The Moon) would not last home proved justified. Wonderful Moon moved up on the outside two furlongs from home and appeared full of running, but weakened again soon afterwards and finally finished sixth. This time, as we expected, Dr. Christoph Berglar's homebred Grocer Jack (Oasis Dream), who had been runner-up to Wonderful Moon in the two main trials for the race, finished in front of him, after taking the lead two furlongs out and keeping on gamely for third place.

The ground had dried out well after the midweek rain but was still on the slow side, as is evident from the race times during the meeting. The Derby was run as a strong pace, thanks to the front-runners, the supplemented Kellahen (Wiesenpfad) and long shot Prince Oliver (Penny's Picnic) and this pair led into the straight, with Grocer Jack a close third. The latter went on as the front duo dropped back, but had to answer to the finishing efforts of In Swoop and Torquator Tasso (Adlerflug) as they both came with strong runs from the rear of the field to lead inside the final furlong, with the former scoring by three parts of a length, and Grocer Jack the same distance back. Kellahen, who had been sold after his latest victory in a listed race at Hanover, where he had been gifted an easy lead and had made all to win easily, was one of two supplemented runners, the other Soul Train (Manduro) never really got into the race and finished tenth.

In Swoop and Torquator Tasso have plenty in common. They are both sons of Adlerflug (In The Wings), who was bred by Schlenderhan and won the Derby in their colours in 2007. Adlerflug raced on at four, winning the Group One Deutschland-Preis, and at five, finishing third in the Group One Prix Ganay, and in the meantime was twice runner-up in the Grosser Preis von Baden, and was then sold to a syndicate run by historic Gestüt Harzburg where he started his stallion career in 2010. As a stallion he has certainly done well – though he will probably never have a better day than last Sunday-- and his offspring include Iquitos, winner of the Grosser Preis von Baden  and Grosser Preis von Bayern (both Group One races over a mile and a half) and also Ito (another winner of the Grosser Preis von Bayern and also In Swoop´s full brother) and several other smart winners, almost all of them over 11 furlongs or further. Stamina is rarely a problem here, and he also seems to get late developers who improve with age and keep their form well. This is also a quality associated with another successful German stallion son of In The Wings, Soldier Hollow.

Both In Swoop and Torquator Tasso, both of whom took the eye in the paddock, were running for only the third time at Hamburg. In Swoop was in training last year with Jean-Pierre Carvalho, and the fact that he was entered in the 2020 German Derby, a race that closed last September, indicates that he must have been showing promise well before his first start. He was one of a number of horses owned by the Ullmann family that were transferred to France at the end of last season, when their private training centre at Bergheim was closed down and Carvalho moved to Mülheim. In Swoop is now trained by Francis-Henri Graffard at Chantilly, and made his debut in a modest maiden at Lyon-Parilly in mid-May this year, starting as favourite (another indication) and winning easily. He was then dropped in the deep end for his second start, the Group Two Prix Greffulhe, also run at Lyon this year and finished third after showing unmistakable signs of inexperience. That was five weeks before Hamburg and in the meantime he has not only improved dramatically but has also become much more professional.  Where he goes now is not yet clear bur Graffard would reportedly like to run him in the Grand Prix de Paris (September 13^th) and he is also entered in the Arc.

It is normal in Germany for the national anthem of the winner to be played after group races, so with a winner trained in France and ridden by a French jockey Ronan Thomas, one was half expecting to hear “La Marseillaise” – appropriately enough in this week of the French Revolution, but instead the relatively unknown “Amhran na Bhfiann” was played, the Republic of Ireland anthem. Presumably this was because In Swoop was listed in the racecard with the (IRE) suffix; that was because his dam Iota (Tiger Hill) was visiting Australia (the stallion, not the country) at Coolmore  at the time when he was foaled. The result of that mating was the now 2yo filly Iffy, currently in training with Gavin Hernon in France. Hernon is of course Irish, and the son of Joe Hernon, well known in German racing circles, but otherwise there is nothing Irish about In Swoop, who has a typical Schlenderhan pedigree. Several of his siblings are now in New Zealand, so there could well be some international successes for this family before too long.

The general feeling before this year´s German Derby was that it was a substandard field, so we must hope that the principals will show some top form in the second half of the season to give the form a boost. Strangely enough, the last few winners of the race have done very little in this respect, in fact only one of the past six winners ever won again. Our esteemed colleague, handicapper Harald Siemen, also seems to have a relatively low opinion of the race as his first reaction was to give In Swoop a German GAG rating of 96 (=international 112)the lowest rating for a German Derby winner for a long time. In the meantime he has uprated the race by one pound, putting In Swoop on 96.5/ 113, but still is still well below par for the race. However, as mentioned above, the fact that the winner and runner-up are both very lightly-raced sons of Adlerflug gives cause for hope, as there could well be considerable improvement to come.

After last week´s dramatic Hamburg meeting – weird yet wonderful without spectators , and with four more group races apart from the Derby– this weekend´s racing is very low key, with Cologne on Saturday and Hoppegarten on Sunday; the listed race for stayers at the Berlin track is the only black type event, but the field is weak for this grade. Spectators – 300 in Cologne and 1,000 in Berlin - are to be allowed on to the race course for the first time since the lockdown began in March. This is possibly a sign that things are slowly getting back to normal, but we suspect it will be a long time yet before we get back to going racing as we used to know it.

David Conolly-Smith