HAMBURG’s race club had bad luck with the weather for its week long Derby meeting last week.

The first weekend experienced a heatwave with temperatures of 35 degrees, almost unbearable for both humans and horses, and the second weekend was wet, windy, cold and miserable.

Despite that, the meeting can be called a success. The attendance was good, including a crowd of 24,000 on Derby Day, the biggest for some years; betting turnover was up by 10%. And most important of all, the right horse won the Derby, which was being run for the 150th time.

This was Laccario, owned and bred by Manfred Ostermann (Gestüt Ittlingen), trained by Andreas Wöhler (his fifth success in the race) and ridden by stable jockey Eduardo Pedroza (his first win after 16 previous attempts).

Pedroza rode a perfect race, was always in a good position on the inside close behind the leaders, drove Laccario into the lead almost two furlongs from home, and from then on had the race in safe keeping.

Improvement

Laccario is now unbeaten in four starts this season, after finishing runner-up on his only start at two. This year he has shown improvement with every start and it is highly likely that there is still more improvement to come. He started 2/1 favourite here after his easy success last time in the main trial, the Union-Rennen, and he is clearly the king of the German crop.

The racecard for the German Derby traditionally lists the horses in the order of their official ratings. In this case there were 15 runners, and the first seven to finish were numbers 1, 2, 4, 3, 7, 6 and 5 on the card, i.e. they finished in almost exactly the order of their ratings, a great piece of work by the German handicappers.

However, the result has also put them in a bit of a quandary. As the form worked out almost to a gram, it is difficult for them to raise the ratings by much of a margin, which would normally be the case with an emphatic Group 1 winner. Also the distances were not huge: Laccario beat runner-up Django Freeman by one and a quarter lengths – it had been double that distance in the Union-Rennen – and there was only five lengths between him and seventh-placed Moonlight Man.

In the end they settled for a new rating of 115 for Laccario, only 2lbs higher than for winning the Union-Rennen, while admitting that he is quite probably better than that, but that they had to go by the official result.

Certainly Laccario had much more in hand than one and quarter lengths, and he won with such authority that it is almost impossible to imagine that he will be beaten this season by any German-trained rival.

Andreas Wöhler has as yet no firm plans for the winner, but he will probably run twice more this season, in the Grosser Preis von Baden and Preis von Europa, two domestic Group 1s over a mile and a half, and have an international campaign next year.

Wöhler has an excellent record with his older horses and nobody will have forgotten his spectacular King George win with Novellist in 2012 nor his Melbourne Cup success with Protectionist in 2014, both as four-year-olds.

Pedigree

Laccario has a fascinating pedigree as he is by far the best product so far of Scalo, also an Ittlingen-bred trained by Wöhler, who was Germany’s champion three-year-old in 2010.

However, he had problems later and is now covering mainly National Hunt mares in Haras de Gelos in south west France at a fee of €2,200. He has had only small crops to represent him with only about 30 horses currently in training.

Laccario, his only winner this year in Germany, is also his first group race winner. Laccario is inbred 3x3 to the Sharpman mare Laurea, the dam of 1993 Deutsches Derby winner Lando, Scalo’s sire, and he is also inbred 4x4 to the highly influential Surumu, the 1977 Deutsches Derby winner.

His future career will be followed with a great deal of anticipation; German racing urgently needs another star, and he could be just the ticket.