BBAG Boutique Opens With Torquator Tasso’s First Yearlings Centre Stage

[Wandering Eyes]

It is not beyond the realms of possibility that eight days after this year's BBAG Yearling Sale, the team behind the German sales company could be celebrating a British Classic winner. 

Already runner-up in the Derby and third in the Irish Derby, Lazy Griff is now being aimed at the St Leger on September 13. The colt, bred by the Rodde family of Gestut Westerberg, graduated from the BBAG sale of 2023, when bought for €75,000 by Jeremy Brummitt, who was also responsible for finding G1 Sun Chariot Stakes winner Tamfana there a year earlier for €20,000. She, too, looks set to be back in Group 1 action before the month is out.

The sires of those two yearlings – Protectionist and Soldier Hollow respectively – are both sadly no longer around. Two members of Protectionist's final crop will be offered on Friday, while there are four by Soldier Hollow, the former German champion sire. His are big boots to fill, but the horse who arrived to stand alongside him at Gestut Auenquelle a year before his death, Torquator Tasso, is the one carries many of the hopes of those involved with the German breeding industry. 

Taking withdrawals into account, there will be 15 of the first batch of the Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe winner's yearlings for potential buyers to peruse over the next few days, from 200 yearlings on offer in total, and BBAG's managing director Klaus Eulenberger is confident that they will be well received. 

“They are very athletic horses,” he says. “They look like stayers but also more like sales horses than the Adlerflugs were – they have much more quality.”

Adlerflug, a fairly leggy and light-framed chestnut, and the celebrated late sire of Torquator Tasso, left quite the mark on the German breed despite dying at the age of 17, His influence has rippled through to the hallowed turf of Longchamp and Ascot, where another son, Goliath, won last year's G1 King George VI and Queen Elizabeth Stakes. 

In his 12 seasons at stud, Adlerflug never had a crop larger than 54 foals. His smallest was 16 in 2015. From the 368 reported foals he left, 312 have so far made it to the track (the youngest are now three) for a winners-to-foals rate of 58 per cent. More impressively, his ratio of stakes winners to foals chimes in at 9.5 per cent. 

Like Soldier Hollow, Adlerflug was by In The Wings, whose influence in Germany followed the years of Monsun dominance and upheld the country's reputation globally as breeders of top-class middle-distance horses. The hunt is now on for Adlerflug's successor. Encouragingly, his Deutsches Derby-winning son In Swoop already has a first-crop dual juvenile winner to his name this year, but he stands in Ireland in Coolmore's National Hunt division. To the German breeding community, success for Torquator Tasso, himself a graduate of BBAG's later yearling sale in October, will mean much. 

“The results of the German horses abroad, it's unreal,” says Eulenberger, who has been closely tracking the progress of last year's €850,000 top lot, Del Maro (Camelot), who was a close second on debut at Newmarket for Godolphin and is entered for Ascot this Saturday. The colt was bred by Gestut Brummerhof, who gave the racing world another famous German Arc winner in Danedream (Lomitas).

“We also had Swagman, a Classic trial winner in Britain this year, which is quite an achievement, and of course Tamfana and Lazy Griff. From the last crop of Protectionist here with us this year we have two colts, one from Rottgen and another Gestut Karlshof, and they're outstanding colts, both of them.”

For weeks now, there has been talk on the circuit about visiting this particular sale, and BBAG looks set to welcome plenty of new potential buyers through its gates this year.

Eulenberger continues, “It's what we used to call a pinhooker's paradise but we now have many more high-value international clients, compared to three years or five years ago. It is getting better every year, and it is the one day of international trade in Germany, so it's great that we are able to keep it on that level.

“We try to improve, but with a limited number of yearlings it is not that easy. But I am happy that the quality of the horses is great and I feel this year many horses are much better than their page.”

As ever, there are changing names on the doors and, as profiled by Brian Sheerin over the weekend, Hetty Spencer will have one of the largest drafts at BBAG, partly owing to her association with Ronald Rauscher, who is not consigning this year but is instead there in his other role as bloodstock agent.

“Hetty sold for the first time at this sale last year and she sold a nice Study Of Man colt for €50,000 to Liberty Racing. The great story is that this horse [Chiefland] won first time out on Saturday,” Eulenberger notes. 

BBAG is a shareholder in the racecourse alongside the sales complex at Iffezheim and, once the sales action has been completed on Friday, there is plenty of racing to be enjoyed over the weekend, including Sunday's G1 Grosser Preis von Baden. 

“We might have the race of the year in Germany here on Sunday – that's up to Rebel's Romance,” says Eulenberger of the potential of Godolphin's popular globe-trotter with two more world travellers – the aforementioned Goliath and the William Haggas-trained multiple Australian Group 1 winner Dubai Honour. They could meet some of Germany's top three-years-olds, including G1 Deutsches Derby winner Hochkonig and Path Of Soldier. 

He adds, “In Germany in the Group 1s it is hard to get a field with enough horses. We were hoping for seven runners, and now it seems we have nine, including three foreign horses. This is an outstanding result.

“We had a great first weekend of racing here. There were some great results for the sale and loads of updates for the yearlings, but also we had nice weather, a really good crowd, and good turnover. It's an end-of-summer festival here in Baden-Baden and I'm very happy, and was a bit surprised, that there are many spectators coming from England and Ireland just to spend a weekend here. That's kind of new.”

 

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