9 minute read
Liberty Racing
Moon shines
Baumgarten and his German-based Liberty Racing Syndicate are enjoying a superb run of top form
LARS-WILHELMBAUMGARTEN experienced what can be called “a racing miracle” at Hamburg during Derby weekend.
Not only did Fantastic Moon win the Deutsches Derby (G1) carrying the colours of his Liberty Racing syndicate, but Liberty’s two other runners also won –Assistent took the Group 2 Grosser Hansa Preis on the Saturday card, while the filly Orofina won the BBAG sales race an hour after the Derby.
To complete an astonishing sequence Muskoka, a three-year-old filly bred by Baumgarten, won the Group 3 Stuten Meile just before the feature race.
“It was,” Baumgarten said a few days later, “astonishing, astonishing, astonishing!
“To win one of these races would have been a thrill, to win all of them was just extraordinary.
“I first went to Hamburg to see the Derby as a 15-year-old boy and have dreamt ever since of winning the race. It is still the race we in Germany want to win above all others, there are some farms such as Gestüt Ebbesloh who have been trying without success for more than a 100 years.
“My father, who shares my passion for racing, has not been well and we did not know until the last minute if he was going to be able to attend. However, he was there and it was very emotional indeed for me to be at Hamburg with him and we watched Fantastic Moon win the Derby in such a brilliant style together.”
Baumgarten’s first job was working as a journalist on a local newspaper, a position which led him to meet Hubertus Fansela, who was then training in Bremen.
“Fansela was,” he explains, “a mentor for me. He taught me everything I know about horses and training. I was young and immediately passionate about racing and I persuaded my father to buy a racehorse and he bought one who did manage to win a handicap.
“Years later I encouraged my father to become the President of the Bad Harzburg race club and he held the post for 15 years during which time its Festival at the end of July became very popular. They also built a new racetrack, something which is not at all easy to do.”
IF RACING was an early passion, Baumgarten’s first business came in other sports and he set up and ran for 20 years one of Germany’s leading sporting agencies.
“We represented a number of tennis players, including Angelique Kerber, who was ranked number one in the world and was a winner of major tournaments. By the end we represented some 500 footballers in 17 different countries,” he says.
“I decided to sell three years ago as it was time for me to have a different lifestyle and one in which my life was not dominated by football.”
It was about the same time that he was persuaded by his girlfriend Nadine Siepmann to set up a syndicate to buy and race horses.
“Nadine’s family has been involved with horses and racing for years,” Baumgarten explains. “Her father has horses with Yann Barberot in France and she suggested I should try and set up a syndicate. I was not initially very keen as I thought it would be difficult and take up a lot of time.
“She kept trying to convince me and one day I said, ‘Okay we are going to do this!’ and started to advertise and look for partners. The first year we started out looking for horses we had 12 partners.”
Liberty Racing 2020 bought four colts, three at the BBAG September Sale and one at the October Sale.
All four become winners – Niagora took a Listed race and he and Weston were both very well sold at Arqana at the end of their three-year-old careers.
MEERGOTT WAS A WINNER in the French provinces and was sold on, too, while the fourth of the crop was the Sea The Moon colt Assistent, who was bought at the September Sale from Gestüt Röttgen for €58,000.
“Assistent has always been a very good horse but also an unlucky one,” says Baumgarten. “At two he suffered a hairline fracture and had to be rested and then before he could make his debut at three he had to undergo surgery following inflammation of the large intestine, for a time his life was in danger.
“After all this he won a Listed race in June and finished fourth in the Deutsches Derby. Our syndicate plans to sell at the end of the horse’s three-year-old career but, if the partners agree, we can keep one of them in training at four – we agreed to sell half of Assistent to Eckhard Sauren and to keep him with trainer Henk Grewe.
“Assistent is now better than ever and has already won two Group 2s and a Listed race and we are looking for him to win his Group 1 before the end of the year.”
The following year Liberty Racing had more partners, 22, and once again bought four horses, two colts at Baden-Baden in September – Winning Spirit from Gestüt Park Wiedingen, Fantastic Moon from Philip von Stauffenberg – as well as two fillies at the Tattersalls October Sale, including Orofina.
Winning Spirit would have been the star of most syndicates as the son of Soldier Hollow is now the winner of two Listed races in Milan, finished second in the Derby Italiano (G2) and fourth in the Deutsches Derby (G1).
Fantastic Moon has, of course, done better still and the son of Sea The Moon is the winner of four of his five starts to date, was the champion two-year-old in Germany and a brilliant winner of the Derby.
He currently has an official rating of 118.
“We haven’t had time to think of his long term future as yet,” reasons Baumgarten. “The first step is to try to win a Group 1 in Germany over 1m2f and then we shall see what the plans are for the rest of the year and his future as a stallion.
“I think he is a very good horse and that he will be at his very best on good ground, even if he is capable like all top horses to run well on both firm and heavy ground.”
Liberty Racing 2023 is a little bigger still with a total of 30 partners and it bought five horses – two are in training with Grewe, while the others are with Sarah Steinberg, Peter Schiergen and Andreas Suborics, who have all trained for the syndicate before.
The five include a Gleneagles filly and Sea The Moon colt bought at Arqana October, and colts by Protectionist, Zoffany and Gleneagles bought at Baden-Baden in September.
“We have established a process for the selection of yearlings,” adds Baumgarten. “Nadine and I go through the catalogues and produce a list to go and see, and then we inspect them together with Henk and the agent Wilhelm ‘Kojak’ Feldmann.
“Once we have a short list Dr Andre Boehmer does a veterinary report for us.
“In order to buy a horse all five of us have to say ‘yes’, and we have never spent more than €95,000 on any one horse and have never bought one when one of us said ‘no’.
“I have no idea what we are going to do this year as since the Derby I have been contacted endlessly by people I have never met who want to be part of the syndicate!
“We shall just have to wait and see how it sorts itself out.”
Liberty Racing has grown into an important and thriving business very quickly, but Baumgarten has plenty of other interests in the racing world.
He is a shareholder in the Grewe stable in Cologne and also in Gestüt Harzburg where he keeps his two mares – for a long time Adlerflug stood at the farm.
“If the Derby was the best day of my racing life,” continues Baumgarten, “the worst one was when I heard that Adlerflug was dead. He was only 17 and just on the verge of achieving everything he deserved.
“With Monsun, he was the most significant stallion to stand in Germany in recent years.
“We bought him for very small money when nobody believed in him and he was covering only a handful of mares.
“Torquator Tasso and In Swoop came along before his untimely death. I fell in love with Adlerflug when I saw him in his Derby trial in Hanover and I still think about him every day. Happily with Torquator Tasso standing in Germany there is a chance he will leave a lasting legacy.”
Baumgarten is a board member of the German Owners and Breeders Association and, together with Gregor Baum, the owner of Gestüt Brümmerhof, was nominated to represent the association on the board of the racing authority at the end of last year.
“With Gregor [Baum], Eckhart [Sauren] Gerhard Schoeningh [chairman of the German Racecourses Association] and others we are working on a plan to safeguard the future of racing in Germany.
“There are three main parts to our strategy. We need to attract new owners and new syndicates as Germany’s leading ownerbreeders will not always be there to support racing and we need to find and encourage a new generation.
“We are also looking to create a charitable foundation to preserve the future of Germany’s best Group and Listed races.
“We hope to raise in the region of €30 million to secure the future of the races, which are so important to Germany as a breeding country.
“And then finally we wish to take a stake in a large betting company to secure racing’s future income.
“I think if we achieve one of these three objectives we may be able to continue as we are today, and, if we succeed with all three, then German racing and breeding will have a bright future.”
Liberty Racing, Fantastic Moon and Assistent have all secured their own future.
Germany’s leading syndicate will surely be buying again at this year’s sales and both Fantastic Moon and Assistent are likely to have future careers as stallions, as well, of course, as plenty of chances of winning Group 1 races beforehand.
Baumgarten, now based in Cologne, will continue to pursue his passions and, aside from his racing and breeding interests, his coaching of gifted people and his investments, when he has time he likes to play poker.
