Saturday’s season finale at Klampenborg is built as one long awards ceremony. Eleven times through the afternoon the winners will be called out in front of the stands – the first at around 12.50, the last at 16.20 – and four of the championships are still undecided. They have to be settled on the track, in the same eight races the crowd is coming to watch.
Four titles, by contrast, were settled long ago. Stutteri Hjortebo wins the breeders’ championship by a margin that is hard to put in perspective: 2,416,450 kroner earned from 27 wins in 130 runs, against 470,880 for the runner-up. That is more than five times as much.
Martin Persson takes the amateur trainers’ championship with eight wins from 29 runs and 269,300 kroner, and Carlos Lopez regains the jockeys’ championship with 27 wins to Oliver Wilson’s 23. Wilson does not ride on the final day at all, as he is booked to partner Stall Perlen’s Zakopane in the German Group 3 Silbernes Pferd over 3,000 metres in Cologne.
Among the sires, Appel Au Maitre is once again the leading one by a wide margin, and Cosmopolitan is the season’s leading horse by earnings with 524,200 kroner from just three runs and two wins.
1,790 kroner apart
The trainers’ championship is the one that leaves the day hanging by a thread until 15.50. Lea Olsen stands on 1,656,630 kroner, Niels Petersen on 1,654,840. There are 1,790 kroner between them – less than a fifth place in an ordinary handicap.
The two have got there by very different routes, and that is the real story in the numbers. Lea Olsen has sent out 115 runners and won 17 races, 14.8 per cent, 14,405 kroner per start.
Niels Petersen has sent out 39 and won 14, that is 35.9 per cent, and 42,432 kroner per start. In other words he has banked almost the same amount as she has from a third of the runners, and earns three times as much every time he loads a horse onto the trailer.
On Saturday he has, among others, Huntington in the Basnæsløb – the visitor from Øvrevoll, who for the third time this year makes the trip south and has to give weight to every rival.
Three in the same race
The amateur riders’ championship is the season’s tightest. Five riders stand on one win each, and from there the standings are decided on second places, so Yasmine Nilsson leads on 1-2-1 from seven rides ahead of Eszter Németh and Tanja Wilhelmsson, who both have 1-1-2. Nathalie Johnsson has 1-0-1 and Emelie Gustavsson 1-0-0.
And then it is all gathered into a single race. Three of the five ride against each other in the day’s amateur race: Yasmine Nilsson on Cece Breakthru, Eszter Németh on Candy Can and Nathalie Johnsson on Des Pa Cito, whom she trains herself.
A win for any of them means two victories in total and the championship without further arithmetic. But there is also a narrower route: Eszter Németh can make do with a second place, because 1-2-2 beats Yasmine Nilsson’s 1-2-1 on the number of third places. Tanja Wilhelmsson and Emelie Gustavsson do not ride and can only look on.
Five wins at stake
The apprentices’ championship is awarded last of all, at 16.20, and lies between three riders who are all in action. Mikkel Mortensen leads narrowly with four wins from 22 starts ahead of Jacob Kvisla, who has three from 60, and Marika Masuhr, who has three from 20. Mortensen has six rides on Saturday, Kvisla five, Masuhr three.
The last race of the day draws two of the threads together in one horse. Isaynomore has already secured the title as the most frequent winner with four victories and two second places from 12 starts – ahead of Mrs Jenney and Biot, who also have four – and is the only one of the three in action on Saturday.
If Isaynomore wins, she becomes the only horse with five victories at Klampenborg this year. She is ridden by Marika Masuhr and trained by Martin Persson.
The remaining awards are decided by jury and by the public. Two-Year-Old of the Year lies between Romanov, Stepdance and Voix Du Maitre, Three-Year-Old of the Year between Albarella, Cosmopolitan and King To Be, Older Horse of the Year between Ami De Vega, Great Wish and Mount Kilimanjaro, and Handicapper of the Year between Biot, Isaynomore and Mrs Jenney.
Horse of the Year is decided at 15.20 by a text-message vote among the crowd.
Klampenborg has at the same time announced 2027: nineteen race days opening on 17 April – but also a prize-money budget that is again being flagged downwards.
