Germany dares to dream with Dardanos

BERLIN – Trainer Andreas Wohler has won the last two German Classics, Hamburg’s Group 1 Deutsches or German Derby (2,400m) with Dardanos in early July and the Group 1 Preis der Diana – German Oaks (2,200m) with Soreanga on Aug 2 at Dusseldorf.

Attention turns to Hoppegarten for the next German feature set down for decision – the €155,000 (S$229,000) Group 1 Grosser Preis von Berlin (2,400m) – and Wohler is relying again on Dardanos to continue that winning sequence at the elite level.

This is the 136th running of a race which has a rich and distinguished list of winners. The multiple champion trainer Wohler won it for the third time in 2016 with Protectionist, the horse he had earlier prepared to win the Group 1 Melbourne Cup (3200m) at Flemington in 2014.

Too strong for his 17 rivals in the closing battle, Dardanos became the longest-priced winner in the history of the German Derby, at odds of 84-1.

Whilst German Derby winners of recent times have struggled to enhance their records afterwards, there appeared to be no fluke about Dardanos’ victory.

“We knew that Dardanos had improved from his previous outing, but we did not know by how much. Winning the Derby will always be so very special,” said the Dortmund-based Wohler, who won the Singapore Cup with Silvano in 2001.

At Hoppegarten, the Soldier Hollow filly will face older rivals in the 10-runner field, including Hochkonig, the 2025 German Derby winner.

But Jack Mitchell’s mount has been solid rather than spectacular in three runs this season, and the biggest threat to Dardanos, who will be ridden by Wohler’s 52-year-old stable jockey Eduardo Pedroza, is most likely to hail from overseas, especially the challenge headed by the four-strong squad from UK, which have won four of the last five renewals.

The Sir Mark Prescott-trained Tiffany has now finished second on her last five starts, three times in Group 1s. Prescott – who won this race with Alpinista in 2021 – observed wryly after her latest runner-up placing in Newmarket’s Group 2 Lancashire Oaks (2,400m) on July 4.

“When you’ve finished second four times in a row, you just knew there would be a fifth. But she ran another great race,” he said.

The popular Farhh mare will be ridden as usual by Luke Morris, but Saeed bin Suroor has booked leading German-based Danish jockey Thore Hammer-Hansen on Tornado Alert for the first time.

Supplemented into the field, Tornado Alert will be making his first start since a convincing success in Munich’s Group 1 Grosser Preis Bayerisches Zuchtrennen (2,000m) over a year ago.

The Too Darn Hot four-year-old will be joined by stablemate Dubai Future (Daniel Tudhope), attempting to become one of the oldest Group 1 winners anywhere in the world.

The Dubawi 10-year-old showed that he was still capable of a big performance when landing the Group 3 Henry II Stakes (3,245m) at Sandown in May.

But perhaps the main British challenger is the Andrew Balding-trained Almeric. Though the four-year-old entire by Study Of Man, who will be ridden by Jason Watson, is without a win this season, his third to Ombudsman in the Group 3 Brigadier Gerard Stakes (1,990m) at Sandown, and his third to the prolific Rebel’s Romance in Newmarket’s Group 2 Princess Of Wales’s Stakes (2,400m), were both high-class performances.

Relatively lightly raced, the grey could easily be ready for big-race glory now.

The Group 1 Grosser Preis von Berlin is carded as Race 8 on the Singapore Pools Germany race card and will be run at 9.40pm (Singapore time) on Aug 9. HKJC