LAST weekend´s Baden-Baden meeting must be regarded as a success, with fine weather, good crowds and betting turnover up by almost 5%.
Two of Germany´s most popular horses won the main events, which added to the positive atmosphere.
Saturday’s Silberne Peitsche went to the Markus Klug-trained Millowitsch, a five-year-old entire who has been one of the most consistent performers in the country for the past four seasons.
This race was over six furlongs, but he seems equally effective over farther and seven is probably his best trip; unfortunately there are very few races for him over this distance.
It was altogether a good weekend for Markus Klug who sent last year’s Deutsches Derby winner Windstoss to Epsom to run a highly respectable third in the Coronation Cup, and also Dschingis Secret to France where he was runner-up to Waldgeist (a horse with a German pedigree and in effect German-owned) in the Grand Prix de Chantilly – a smart performance considering he was conceding weight all around in this Group 2 event.
The one disappointment for the stable was the fourth place finish of Colomano in Baden-Baden’s feature event, the Group 2 Grosser Preis der Badischen Wirtschaft.
He moved up menacingly at the entrance to the straight, but did not go through with his effort. Instead the race was won in excellent style by the six-year-old entire Iquitos, a real Baden-Baden specialist, who came with a devastating run from the rear to score by one and a half lengths under his new jockey, Frenchman Eddy Hardouin.
VISIBLY MOVED
Veteran trainer Hans-Jüwinrgen Gröschel, who postponed his retirement two years ago because of this horse, was visibly moved by this latest performance.
“Iquitos loves Iffezheim, he has been first or second on all his six starts here, and the racegoers here love him back. He is much better going left-handed, so his route now is the Grand Prix de Saint-Cloud (in which Waldgeist and Dschingis Secret are also expected to run), the Group 1 at Munich which he won last year, back here for the Grosser Preis von Baden, which he won in 2016, and then possibly the Japan Cup again – all at left-handed tracks. We have deliberately not entered him for the Arc, in which he ran seventh last year, at right-handed Longchamp.”
Iquitos was now won seven of his 21 starts and been runner-up six times, almost all in Group 1 or Group 2 races, while Millowitsch – named after a popular comedian and folksinger – has won nine of his 17 starts and been placed six times; he was fourth on both his other starts and he also has raced almost exclusively in blacktype events.
However, the horse to take out of the Baden-Baden meeting is undoubtedly Jaber Abdullah’s Royal Youmzain (no prizes for guessing who is his sire), trained by Andreas Wöhler, a most impressive winner of the Group 3 Ittlinger Derby Trial and now a best-priced 6/4 favourite for the real thing at Hamburg on July 8th.