After more than a century of chasing in vain, the Lauritzen family finally won the Danish Derby as Cosmopolitan triumphed for Stald Shaker – handing Søren Jensen his fifth Derby victory and Jules Mobian a win in his very first Derby ride.
Some victories are bigger than the race itself.
For more than 100 years the Lauritzen family had been trying to win the Danish Derby – all the way back to Jens Ditlev Lauritzen’s grandmother, Lilian Lauritzen – and on Saturday evening Stald Shaker, alias Marianne and Jens Ditlev Lauritzen, finally got there.
The victory wrote history in several chapters at once. Søren Jensen collected his fifth Danish Derby win – 49 years after his first with Ascot in 1977, followed by Federico (1995), Sir Henry (2010) and Sir Herman (2017).
Stutteri Hjortebo recorded its eighth Derby win as a breeder – and even supplied both the winner and the runner-up in this year’s renewal. And Jules Mobian claimed the blue riband in his very first ride in the race – the Frenchman’s third winner on a Derby Day he will not soon forget.
Cosmopolitan was crowned both Two-Year-Old of the Year and Horse of the Year at Klampenborg in 2025 after landing the Danish Criterium, yet went into the Derby relegated to outsider status at ten-to-one, his spring form having raised doubts.
Over the full Derby trip, the doubters got their answer: Cosmopolitan relished every one of the 2,400 metres to the final stride and secured Stald Shaker the winner’s prize of DKK 500,000.
For the more than 200 shareholders of Stald Klampenborg it was an evening of pride and pounding hearts alike: the people’s horse King To Be came within half a length of fulfilling the dream but had to settle for second – an all-Hjortebo duel at the head of the field.
Behind those two came yet another sensation: the only filly in the field, the Funen-trained longshot Red Moondancer (Appel Au Maitre), flew home into third for Tina Mortensen, Diego Pedroza and owner-breeder Jakob Dalhoff’s Lokalebasen.dk.
Danish 2000 Guineas winner Albarella (Toronado) and last year’s Auction Race winner Daylight (Gleneagles) took the remaining prizes, while Doc Holliday – promoted to clear favouritism after the late withdrawal of stablemate Lord Of The Moon – raced prominently early but never landed a blow in the finish, coming home seventh.
The Lennart J:r Reuterskiöld-trained Icefall (Juniper Tree) lost his jockey Maikel Narvaez Bravo shortly after turning down the back straight, in a chain reaction in which Charlie Nosto (Mutajally), on the inside, briefly appeared to lose his action.
A century in the making
The story of Stald Shaker’s Derby victory begins long before Cosmopolitan – more than a hundred years ago, in fact. It was Jens Ditlev Lauritzen’s grandmother, Lilian Lauritzen, who led the family into racing in the 1920s.
She was among the riders in Denmark’s first race for female amateur jockeys and owned racehorses together with Lone Kaj-Nielsen’s mother, Enid Ingemann – and the Derby dream has lived in the family ever since, a family that already had the sea in its blood through great-grandfather Ditlev Lauritzen’s shipping company J. Lauritzen, founded in 1884.
Jens Ditlev Lauritzen himself first came to Klampenborg in 1957 – in a pushchair. Later followed his father Jørgen Ditlev Lauritzen’s Stald Shaker, where it was decreed that the horses should be named after cocktails.
Over the years the stable produced standard-bearers such as Famous Grouse, runner-up behind Parthe in the 1997 Danish Derby, The Kicker and later Stinger – but the blue riband remained out of reach.
As for Cosmopolitan, Marianne and Jens Ditlev Lauritzen have been on board from the very beginning, when the colt was still in the womb of his dam Amorine (Montjeu).
Amorine was bought for €21,000 through Morten Buskop Bloodstock at the 2022 edition of Arqana’s Vente de l’Elevage in Deauville, in what became a joint venture between Stald Shaker and Stutteri Hjortebo – and Cosmopolitan was foaled on 18 March the following year.
“The joy of anticipation is the greatest joy of all,” Jens Ditlev Lauritzen once told Klaus Bustrup in a RaceTime interview.
On Saturday evening his own horse proved him wrong, as Cosmopolitan – named, of course, after a cocktail, faithful to his father’s old christening rule – hit the line first in the Bucherer Danish Derby and completed the quest three generations of the family have pursued since Lilian’s pioneering days.
A good hundred years in the making – and in the end, the joy of fulfilment was the greatest of all.
