Teofilo, Camelot and Frankel colts among those under hammer

Lot 156

B f Sea The Stars - Beata (Silver Frost)

Stauffenberg Bloodstock

German breeders love Sea The Stars, unsurprisingly when he tends to impart abundant class and stamina, and supplied the brilliant Deutsches Derby winner Sea The Moon. There are four lots by him in the sale, including this half-sister to German champion and multiple Group winner Best Of Lips – whom the dam Beata, a half-sister to Prix de Diane heroine Bright Sky, managed to get from the underwhelming sire The Gurkha.

Lot 180

B f Too Darn Hot - Quaduna (Duke Of Marmalade)

Gestüt Fährhof

Too Darn Hot has made an encouraging start with his introductory two-year-olds, with plenty of exciting maiden and novice winners among their number, and he has wellbred crops to follow. This filly by the dual champion son of Dubawi is a half-sister to last year’s leading German twoyear-old filly Quantanamera, and her first two dams Quaduna and Quelle Amore are both Group winners.

Lot 189

B c Frankel - Vagabonde (Acclamation)

Ronald Rauscher

The only lot by the incomparable Frankel in the catalogue is a colt out of Vagabonde, a dual winning

Acclamation half-sister to Group-winning twoyear-olds Kalahara (also by Frankel) and Sasparella, from the prestigious family of Intello, Mondialiste and Occupandiste. His full-sister sold here for €250,000 last year and has been named Comic Book and placed in training with Jessica Harrington for Yulong Investments.

Lot 196

B c Soldier Hollow - Achinora (Sleeping Indian)

Gestüt Auenquelle Soldier Hollow is a multiple champion sire in Germany and has supplied Group 1 winners Dschingis Secret, Ivanhowe, Pastorius, Serienholde and Weltstar, but he should be on the radar of British and Irish buyers as his stock has considerable resale into the jumps sphere, where he has been represented by Arctic Fire and Saldier, and Australia, where Ivanhowe took the Doomben Cup. This colt by the son of In The Wings is a fullbrother to three winners including dual Group 3 scorer and German 1,000 Guineas runner-up Axana.

Summer Yearlings Bbag

Focus On Adlerflug

ADLERFLUG was by the accomplished sire In The Wings and from one of his breeder Gestüt Schlenderhan’s best families, tracing back to the phenomenal blue hen mare Urban Sea’s granddam Anatevka.

The striking chestnut with four long white socks and big white blaze lived up to his impressive pedigree by winning the Deutsches Derby at three and DeutschlandPreis at four, each time by seven lengths, and he is widely recognised as the most important sire to have stood in Germany since the mighty Monsun.

He has supplied 28 blacktype winners and counting, including seven at the highest level, several of whom have shone beyond Germany’s borders: Torquator Tasso, who beat a stellar international field to land the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe; In Swoop, who beat Torquator Tasso in the Deutsches Derby and was later a neck second to Sottsass in the Arc; Alenquer, who took the Tattersalls Gold Cup; and domestic stars Iquitos, Ito, Lacazar and Mendocino.

Surprisingly, however, Adlerflug’s path to greatness was a rocky one. It took him years to gain the respect of German breeders, and by the time they were convinced it was all too late. He succumbed to a heart attack early in the 2021 covering season, when his fee had been raised from €10,000 to €16,000, leaving a small last crop – six of whom will be offered at the BBAG Yearling Sale next month.

Lars-Wilhelm Baumgarten, a leading figure in the German racing industry who has been celebrating a rare double having campaigned through his own syndicates or partnerships both this year’s Deutsches Derby victor Fantastic Moon and Preis der Diana heroine Muskoka (who he also bred with ex-wife Antje), managed the career of Adlerflug in the latter half of the sire’s career, which he says got off to a shaky start.

“The problem was he was a small horse with a physique that wasn’t that impressive, and he was injured early in his last season racing, so he wasn’t deemed to be a top breeding prospect even though he had been an excellent racehorse,” he explains.

“So Schlenderhan decided not to stand him and instead syndicated him with other farms, including Gestüt Brümmerhof, Gestüt Bona and Gestüt Harzburg, which had a majority interest at around 60 per cent and stood him.

“But Harzburg was a very traditional farm in the middle of nowhere in northern Germany, with more National Hunt mares than Flat, and it wasn’t commercial or all that successful, so he didn’t get a lot of support in his early years at stud.

“It’s probably the biggest mistake in the long and glorious history of Schlenderhan, but you have to remember this was around the time that Georg von Ullmann had a lot of problems with the private bank he co-owned having collapsed, so it was hardly a good time to launch a sire. And at least they sold to a German stud, as he could have just as easily ended up standing in Hungary or Turkey.”

Gestüt Harzburg ran into its own difficulties around the middle of the last decade when the Lower Saxony state bank that leased the stud had to exit the business to pay off its loans. Amid the financial chaos Adlerflug, who had spent seven seasons there and was showing significant promise with his early crops, was re-syndicated with a value of €1 million.

A newly formed company led by Baumgarten took on the bank’s shares in the sire, and it was decided that he should return to his birthplace to continue his career. So in 2017 he took up residence in the stallion box at Schlenderhan once inhabited by Monsun.

“I’d seen him race at Hanover, when he won the Derby trial by five lengths, and from that point I’d been convinced he would make a good sire,” says Baumgarten. “I just loved that Schlenderhan line, going back to Anatevka, who has given us not just Galileo and Sea The Stars but the likes of King’s Best and Tertullian too.

“I created the syndicate that bought him and then managed him for all the shareholders, setting the fee, handling nominations and creating advertising and so on. I negotiated with Georg von Ullmann and his stud manager Gebhard Apelt to take the horse back to Schlenderhan, in the breeding heartlands, and I set about generating a little more excitement around him and getting him more mares.”

It might have been thought that a big marketing campaign