300 meters from the finish, Thore Hammer-Hansen gave the decisive command. “Darling, let’s go,” the jockey told his assistant horse – and he carried out the command in a spectacular way. On the inside, the stallion pushed past Tiffany shortly before the finish and took victory in the Grand Allianz Prix of Bavaria at the Munich-Riem racetrack on Sunday afternoon with a neck-length lead.
It was Assistant‘s first ever victory in a Group 1 race, and the outsider received prize money of 100,000 euros. His trainer Henk Grewe found the victory “absolutely crazy,” which was also because it came in the last race of the assistant’s career. Grewe revealed immediately after the race that the “mad horse” will now become a breeding stallion as the Group 1 winner. How close the victory was was also made clear in the jockey’s cabin, where the young British talent Billy Loughnane first assured his fellow jockeys of the narrow finish with a somewhat disbelieving sounding “on the line”, i.e. on the home straight.
Assistant also left the favored guests from England and France behind. Behind Tiffany, the highly rated Ancient Wisdom, like Tiffany one of the top-class starters from England, came in third. Tiffany had already won three times in Germany, most recently a Group II test in Baden-Baden, and then proved that she is one of the best mares in Europe. On Sunday, her assistant spoiled her fourth triumph on German soil at the last second.
Race day was overshadowed by a serious crash
The race day was overshadowed by a serious fall in the sixth of the nine races. Jockey Tomas Roman on Black and Blue had to be taken to hospital with serious injuries. Roman suffered a thoracic vertebra injury and a bruised lung in the fall. “He can move and has spoken,” Sascha Multerer, the managing director of the Munich racing club, was able to give at least a little all-clear at the end of the racing day.
Until the serious crash, Multerer was very happy with race day. This was not only special because of the very well-attended Grand Prix. Eleven horses took part in the Bavarian Grand Prix, a rarity, emphasized Multerer. In addition to the quantity, it was also the quality of the field of participants: according to Multerer, the race was “by far the best Group 1 race of the season in Germany”. The Riem race day was also special because races five to eight, which also included the Grand Prix, were part of the World Pool in Hong Kong for the first time and were therefore broadcast worldwide. In their royal blue colors, Marquisat and Ancient Wisdom, two horses from the globally operating Godolphin thoroughbred empire, behind which the ruler of Dubai, Sheikh Mohammed Al Maktoum, stands, provided glitz and glamor. Top favorite Marquisat had to settle for fifth place and was never able to intervene in the fight for first place.
Straight’s result also made it clear how well the race was. Before the last Group 1 race of the season across Europe, the four-year-old stallion had the greatest German hopes. But this time he had nothing to do with the outcome of the race. From the start he was at the back of the field and ended up in second to last place. This came as a surprise as the stallion had recently caused a sensation. In Cologne in September, Straight was only beaten by the world-class galloper Rebel’s Romance, who has won more than seven million euros in prize money in his career. In mid-October, Straight won the Gran Premio del Jockey Club, worth 247,500 euros, one of the biggest horse races in Italy, at the San Siro racecourse in Milan.
So Straight came to Munich in top form, but it wasn’t a given that he would start there. The owners decided late and were not deterred by the 15,000 euros that were due for a subsequent nomination. The performance may have been particularly disappointing for owners and trainers.
The Munich racing club, however, saw confirmation of its decision to move the Grand Prix, which had come to Munich in 2012, to November – it worked perfectly. The season finale in Riem will take place on November 23rd.
