August, 2022 | Horse Racing Free Tips

Stellar German Families in the Spotlight at BBAG

BADEN-BADEN, Germany–There has been much for German racing and breeding to celebrate since its premier yearling sale of 12 months ago. That same weekend, Torquator Tasso (Ger), a graduate of the 2018 sale, landed the G1 Grosser Preis von Baden just across the road from the auction house before going on to his memorable victory in the G1 Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe. A reminder, if one were needed, that German bloodlines can mix it with the very best in the world, as also exemplified recently by the GI Beverly D S. victrix Dalika (Ger) (Pastorius {Ger}).

Baden-Baden's 'Grosse Woche', which includes four days of racing action in Iffezheim, is in full swing again and culminates on Sunday with a repeat appearance from Torquator Tasso in the meeting's big race, in which he will take on this year's G1 German Derby winner Sammarco (Ire) (Camelot {GB}). The week is going well for Paul Vandeberg, who bred not only Torquator Tasso but his half-brother Tünnes (Ger) (Guiliani {Ger}), the one-time 2022 German Derby favourite who missed the early part of his Classic season through injury but bounced back in style with his easy victory in the Preis der BBAG Auktionsrennen on Wednesday afternoon.

Vandeberg has decided to keep hold of the yearling full-brother to the Arc winner, a colt made that bit more precious by the sad demise of his sire Adlerflug (Ger) in April 2021, but this year's Derby-winning breeder Helmut von Finck is offering the half-brother to Sammarco on Friday. The colt by the veteran of the German stallion ranks, Areion (Ger), features as lot 157. His dam Saloon Sold (Ger), by von Finck's hugely successful stallion Soldier Hollow (GB), won at two and three and earned listed black type before hitting the bullseye in producing a Classic winner as her first foal. Sammarco has also gone on to win the G1 Grosser Dallmayr-Preis over 10 furlongs against his elders since his Derby triumph.

“Winning the Derby with Sammarco was very special,” said von Finck at BBAG on Wednesday. “The auction company wanted to have his brother here but he is a late foal, born in May, and Areion is not such a commercial stallion so we do not expect a big price. If we cannot sell him we will keep him to race. We will see how the market is. Sammarco came here two years ago and people thought he was small but he wasn't too small to win the Derby.”

Gestut Park Wiedingen's draft of four homebreds also includes lot 39, a colt by Sea The Moon (Ger) who is a grandson of von Finck's Preis der Diana (German Oaks) winner Flamingo Road (Ger) (Acatenango {Ger}), as well as the first foal of champion 2-year-old Whispering Angel (Ger) (Soldier Hollow {GB}). The filly is by the late Mastercraftsman (Ire) and is catalogued as lot 70.

“We have four very good horses,” von Finck continued. “A Sea The Moon from one of my favourite families of Flamingo Road, then we have a Soldier Hollow filly from Elvira (Ger), who is from a very good Rottgen family, and of course Soldier Hollow fillies are very interesting at the moment.”

He added, “I would like to think about involving partners or a syndicate in the future but no-one has spoken to me about this project. That's maybe the way we will go. I love my horses and I stand behind them.”

With Sammarco aiming for a third consecutive Group 1 victory on Sunday in the Grosser Preis, von Finck said he remains calm despite the big occasion.

“Obviously everything has to go well but he is in good shape and he is supposed to run, that”s what he was bred to do,” he said. “Of course Torquator Tasso will be hard to beat but I would be happy with second or third.”

Von Finck is also the breeder of Group 3 winner and Derby runner-up Destino (Ger) (Soldier Hollow {GB}), who recently started his stud career at Gestut Westerberg and has his first yearlings for sale this year. His duo in the BBAG catalogue are both consigned by Peter and Aline Rodde's Gestut Westerberg, a pair of athletic colts who will sell at each end of the sale as lots 12 and 213.

Peter Rodde, overseeing his draft as the early viewers got to work, divulged that Destino, who is the only son of the 22-year-old Soldier Hollow at stud in Germany, had covered 27 mares in his first crop.

Another first-crop stallion very much aligned with Germany but with connections in Britain and Ireland is the Ballylinch Stud resident Waldgeist (GB), who is well-represented at BBAG, not least in the drafts of his co-breeders Gestut Ammerland and Gestut Fahrhof, the latter under the Jacobs family's former ownership of Newsells Park Stud, where the Arc winner was bred.

Waldgeist's nine yearlings in Baden-Baden include four of a five-strong draft from Ammerland, which recently enjoyed a terrific sale at Arqana in Deauville, selling six yearlings for a total of €2,375,000. Among its offerings here, lot 133 is a Waldgeist half-brother to the aforementioned Dalika, whose Grade I strike almost three weeks ago provided an important late update for the colt. There could yet be more to come from the Albert Stall-trained mare, who is now being primed for the GI Breeders' Cup Filly & Mare Turf.

A welcome burst of rain appeared overnight in Baden-Baden, bringing the temperature down to a reasonable working level as agents from overseas started to drift into the sales ground on Wednesday morning. Action abated for a while as racing got underway next door, with an update for lot 151, Haras de l'Hotellerie's filly by Bated Breath (GB), provided by her half-sister Noble Heidi (Fr) (Intello {Ger}), who was the easy winner of the Coolmore-sponsored Listed Baden-Baden Cup. Now four, the daughter of the Orpen mare Noble Pensee (Fr), already had bold black type to her name as the winner of the G3 Preis der Winterkonigin as a 2-year-old.

Germany's largest commercial stud, Gestut Fahrhof, perhaps understandably boasts the most international list of sires when it comes to the yearlings offered. Among its draft of 17 is the only colt by Frankel (GB) in the sale, lot 58 being a three-parts-brother to the G1 Premio Roma winner Potemkin (Ger) (New Approach {GB}). The Fahrhof consignment also contains first-crop fillies by Too Darn Hot (GB) and Study Of Man (Ire), as well as a colt by Kingman (GB) out of the listed winner Sarandia (Ger) (Dansili {GB}). Kingman has already done the Fahrhof team quite a favour in providing 'TDN Rising Star' Habana (Ger), who was another facile winner on the rain-softened ground at Baden-Baden as the 2-year-old filly posted a Group 3 victory in the stud's distinctive black and yellow silks in Wednesday's feature race, the Renate und Ulbrecht Woeste Zukunfts-Rennen.

For breeders and consignors at BBAG, it was important to keep an eye on both the racecourse and the sales grounds during the initial day of showing, but for the next two days the focus will be solely on selling this year's crop of yearlings, with the sale set to start at 10 a.m. on Friday. We've seen some vibrant trade at BBAG in recent years, including a record-breaking top lot of €820,000 in 2019, which was equalled 12 months later even in the midst of a pandemic. It seems reasonable to expect another strong session on Friday, especially while German-breds continue to advertise the strength of the brand on a worldwide stage.

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Amo Racing Lose Norfolk Appeal

Amo Racing's appeal against the victory of The Ridler (GB) (Brazen Beau {Aus}) in the G2 Norfolk S. at Royal Ascot has been dismissed, despite the fact that Paul Hanagan's ride aboard the winner was described by the disciplinary panel as being “poor, reprehensible and self-evidently culpable”.

The Ridler, trained by Richard Fahey, caused interference to Crispy Cat (GB) (Ardad {Ire}) and Brave Nation (Ire) (Sioux Nation), who finished third and fourth in that order for owners Amo Racing and Brian Goodyear, respectively. Amo Racing's Walbank (Ire) (Kodiac {GB}) ran second and was unimpeded by the winner's erratic passage.

The stewards on the day suspended Hanagan for 10 days for careless riding in the Norfolk, however, the appeals panel rejected the case presented to them by Amo's Kia Joorabchian.

Amo argued that The Ridler should be disqualified or demoted for causing interference to the placed horses.

The written reasons that accompanied the decision said, “Mr. Hanagan's riding performance in the race was poor, reprehensible and self-evidently culpable.

“His inattention and misjudgement were not defensible. He is a jockey of huge experience [with approaching 17,000 rides and 2,200 winners behind him] and should have done much better.

“It was a bad, high-level instance of careless riding and he entirely deserved a suspension of real substance.

“An essential point to emphasise, however, is that at the end of the day we do conclude that what happened did properly fall into the category of careless riding; and not just simply because, under the regulations in this country, it is probable that no other categorisation is in fact possible.

“In the panel's view the prospect of Crispy Cat having won, absent the interference, was slim in all the circumstances to which we have referred.

“That said, we have in any event in the course of explaining our rationale expressed our view as to the ease with which The Ridler won the race.”

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Odell Skilfully Captures Lifeblood of Racing

It could be a little daunting for a modern-day artist to follow Sir Alfred Munnings in the exhibition space of Newmarket's National Horseracing Museum. Munnings is an iconic name in the sporting art world, and many of his best known images of racehorses at the start were created from his makeshift studio in an old rubbing house on Newmarket Heath which exists to this day. He lived and breathed his subject, but so too does the photographer Jayne Odell FRPS, whose striking black and white images are exhibited in the museum until Dec. 4.

Odell, one of just 600 Fellows of the Royal Photographic Society, lives in the centre of Newmarket, her home backing on to one of its most historic yards. This prompted a five-year project devoted to studying the beating heart of the town, which is the everyday training of thoroughbreds.

“I moved here and I got hooked on it,” she says. “Seeing the horses out in the morning and the whole rhythm of the town.

“I realised we were behind Charlie Fellowes's old yard. We started to hear the sounds of the yard and I got a bit intrigued and then started going out to take pictures and gradually built up a body of work. The love grew and then the opportunities seemed to grow from that.”

Love is a theme which runs through the substantial monochromatic exhibition, from the photographer's own eye for a subject she clearly finds absorbing, to the day-to-day interactions between the horses and those charged with their care, and the extraordinary attention to detail that goes into the routine of every stable yard.

“Look at pride in their work,” Odell exclaims as she guides TDN through the exhibition. “I love the things that go on in the background behind the racing itself–the farriery, the valets, saddle makers and all the traditions and crafts that are involved behind the scenes. I wanted it to be a fly-on-the-wall snapshot of life behind the world of horseracing, behind the glamour of race days.”

Her work certainly conveys not just the bond between man and horse, but also the camaraderie of the stable staff. And it acts as an important social history of the town that provides the fabric on which so much of the heritage and tradition of horseracing has been woven. In essence, not that much has changed since the days that the court of King Charles II set up a sporting home away from home in Palace House, just across the road from where these images are on display. Horses are still the lifeblood of Newmarket and much of the town's business now hinges on the breeding and racing of these finest of creatures.

Indeed, one of the most striking images is that of former trainer James Eustace, keeping an eye on his string on a bitter winter's morning, his breath backlit by the rising sun. It is an almost timeless image but in those 400 years since the royal patronage of Newmarket began, so much has of course changed. And in many ways it has changed slowly. Khadijah Mellah, the first British Muslim woman to ride a winner, is also the subject of one of the portraits at Fellowes's stable, and while her victory at Goodwood was considered a breakthrough moment because of her ethnicity, it was only as recently as 1972 that any women was allowed to ride in a race in Britain.

“It's a body of work that I'm still going to expand on and look at from slightly different angles, but I hope it will be a legacy for the town, really,” Odell explains. “Because we do want to see, in future generations, pictures of how things are now. With social media and things like that, it's a very transient, and it's current today, but tomorrow it's old hat. But images that stand the test of time and that record that moment in time, I think are really important.”

Apart from the glorious Heath itself, nothing has stood the test of time in Newmarket quite like its equine inhabitants, who of course play a vital role in Odell's collection which has a section devoted to the four seasons.

“The horses are the timekeepers of the town,” she says. “So I wanted to depict the whole year, almost like a film strip of different conditions from winter through to spring, summer, and then autumn, and the fact that the horses are training all day, every day, all weathers, all conditions.”

Officially titled Time and Motion: Capturing the Lifeblood of a Racing Yard, the exhibition will continue at the National Horseracing Museum throughout the sales and racing season in Newmarket until early December and, within easy walking distance of Tattersalls, it is recommended to all visitors to the town this autumn.

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Kentucky Equine Education Project To Host Horse Industry Advocacy Event Sept. 6

The Kentucky Equine Education Project (KEEP) will host a horse industry advocacy event at Midway University on Sept. 6, from 5-7 p.m.

All participants in Kentucky's signature horse industry are invited to attend to learn about legislative issues that can impact their equine business, how to engage in the legislative process, and how to best communicate with lawmakers.

In addition to representatives from KEEP and the Kentucky Thoroughbred Association, speakers will include Senate Majority Floor Leader Damon Thayer, Senate Minority Caucus Chair Reggie Thomas, and Representative Matt Koch.

Candidates for contested open legislative seats are also invited to provide them with an opportunity to meet with horse industry participants and to learn about the industry and its $6.5 billion annual economic impact on the Commonwealth.

Individuals interested in attending the event should RSVP to Brittany Bell at brittany@horseswork.com

About KEEP

The Kentucky Equine Education Project, Kentucky's equine economic advocate, is a not-for-profit grassroots organization created in 2004 to preserve, promote and protect Kentucky's signature multi-breed horse industry. KEEP is committed to ensuring Kentucky remains the horse capital of the world, including educating Kentuckians and elected officials of the importance of the horse industry to the state. KEEP was the driving force in the establishment of the Kentucky Breeders Incentive Fund, which has paid out more than $177 million to Kentucky breeders since its inception in 2006, and pari-mutuel wagering on historical horse racing, which has been responsible for more than $40 million to purses and more than $24 million to the Kentucky Thoroughbred Development Fund.

KEEP works to strengthen the horse economy in Kentucky through our statewide network of citizen advocates. To learn more about how you can become a member or support our work, please visit www.horseswork.com.

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