THE Germans celebrate as their champion the trainer who has won the most races and by this measure Markus Klug comes out on top. Based at Gestüt Röttgen, Klug had an excellent season and had many notable winners and also plenty of placed horses in the big races. His runners earned more than €1.3 million - more than they had managed in 2014 when he trained Derby winner Sea The Moon.

Andreas Wöhler is second in the table, but clear leader on earnings, with €1.8 million won in Germany and a lot more abroad as well. He dominated most of the season, winning the Derby, Oaks and Grosser Preis von Berlin, and although his form tailed off slightly in the late autumn, he still ended with an impressive strike rate of over 25%.

His handling of Protectionist was the highlight of the season; the 2014 Melbourne Cup winner had lost his form completely when staying on down under in 2015, but brought back to his familiar surroundings at Wöhler’s Gütersloh stable, began to thrive again, winning his first three races of the season, including that Berlin Group 1.

Other trainers who can look back on the 2016 season with satisfaction include Jean-Pierre Carvalho and Hans-Jürgen Gröschel; the former also had a strike rate of 25% and ended the year with his customary Group 1 success at Munich, while the latter, a veteran of 74 years, had his best ever season thanks to the four-year-old Iquitos, winner of the Grosser Preis von Baden and later a respectable seventh, and best European, in the Japan Cup, a performance which earned his owners considerably more than the Baden-Baden victory.

The 41-year-old Prague-born Filip Minarik is champion jockey for the third time, just reward for a season of consistent success, in which he also got married and had his first child.

With many of the leading German-based jockeys now on the wrong side of 40, it was good to see two relative youngsters make their mark - Martin Seidl (22) and Michael Cadeddu (29), the latter in younger years a teenage TV star in his native Italy, and both of whom won prestigious group race events.

LEADING OWNER

Leading owner was Darius Racing, the nom de course of Munich businessman Dr Stefan Oschmann and his wife Sharpar. Although relative newcomers, at least at the top level, they had a great year, headed by the Derby triumph of Isfahan and also won four more group races.

They are followed in the statistics by the familiar names of Gestüt Wittekindshof, owner-breeders of the Oaks and St Leger winners, Gestüt Röttgen and Stall Ullmann.

Gestüt Fährhof wase only seventh in the table, but was clear top of the breeders’ statistics, and also did very well abroad with Wake Forest winning the Man O’ War Stakes at Belmont Park and Potemkin the Premio Roma.

Röttgen and Wittekindshof come next and in fourth place we find trainer Andreas Wöhler and his wife Susi, who only have two mares, but one of them is the dam of Derby winner Isfahan.

CHAMPION SIRE

Champion sire for the first time (but almost certainly, not the last) is Soldier Hollow, who had a great season with 30 individual winners of 45 races and almost €1.3 million, an impressive figure considering the level of prize-money here. The well-established Areion is in second place, followed by Lord Of England, but the stallion discovery of the year was 2007 German Derby winner Adlerflug in fourth place with only four crops racing. As the sire of Iquitos and Savoir Vivre he looks set to be a major factor again next year. Like Soldier Hollow, he is a son of In The Wings, and it seems that stallions from the Sadler’s Wells line frequently click with mares from the traditional German families.