Lea Olsen became Danish champion trainer in 2025, but her father, Bent Olsen, is the trainer resident in Denmark with the largest total earnings. The most successful trainer of Danish origin is to be found at Øvrevoll – Niels Petersen, who also became Scandinavian champion trainer.
Top 5 trainer statistics 2025
(Total earnings for trainers resident in Denmark – 1000 kr.)
| Trainer | Denmark | Sweden (SEK) | Norway | Total |
| Bent Olsen | 1.952 | 2.046 | 196 | 3.445 |
| Lea Olsen | 2.173 | 1.367 | 72 | 3.108 |
| Rikke Bonde | 1.527 | 586 | – | 1.891 |
| Bettina Andersen | 1.269 | 604 | 34 | 1.697 |
| Søren Jensen | 1.128 | 665 | 46 | 1.584 |
NO SURRENDER WAS BENT OLSEN’S BIGGEST EARNER.
Bent Olsen had another fine season in 2025. He is still going strong.
Overall he was the Danish trainer with the largest earnings. But his daughter Lea is breathing down his neck, and I think no one wants his daughter Lea to beat him this year more than Bent does.
Bent Olsen also became champion at his home track Klampenborg in 2025, as is almost traditional.
But it is above all Bent Olsen’s successes in Sweden that make him the Danish trainer with the largest race earnings overall in 2025.
2025 brought Bent three classic wins, two Breeders’ wins, and a win in the Produce Stakes.
No Surrender (Giant Sandman) won the Swedish 2000 Guineas, Happy Legend (Rock Of Gibraltar) the Danish Oaks and Sandhurst (Havana Gold) the Danish St. Leger.
No Surrender also took care of the two Breeders’ wins, in the Breeders’ Trophy Classic at Bro Park and the Breeders’ Prize Sprint at Øvrevoll respectively. And Cool Magic (Moohaajim) secured Bent a win in the Produce Stakes.
The really big earner was No Surrender, who earned just under 1.2 million kroner, which corresponds to a good third of Bent Olsen’s total race earnings in 2025.
No Surrender became the most successful horse in Sweden last year. It is only the third time in the last 10 years that a Danish-trained horse has achieved that.
In 2021 it was the Søren Jensen-trained Good Fortune (Appel Au Maitre), who that year won Jockeyklubbens Grand Prix and the Breeders’ Trophy Classic, both at Bro Park.
And in 2019 it was Red Cactus (Hard Spun), who won the Svenskt Derby and the Hurricanelöpning, both at Jägersro. Red Cactus was trained by Bent Olsen.
Red Cactus is now leaving his mark at Jägersro once again.
In the Svenskt Kriterium 2025 two of Red Cactus‘s progeny, Red Tattoo and Red Mantel, finished second and third respectively, and on the same day Missing – also by Red Cactus – won the Svenskt Kriterium Consolation.
Bent Olsen’s other ”moneymaker” in 2025 was the Night Of Thunder son Great Wish.
He won three times at Klampenborg and ran prominently in all the big Scandinavian sprint contests, among them the Listed races the Challenge Stakes and the Zawawi Sprint Cup, where he was second in both.
In all Great Wish earned 322,000 kroner in 2025. Both No Surrender and Great Wish are wintering in Dubai.
LEA OLSEN HAD HER BEST YEAR AS A TRAINER.
Every year since Lea became a trainer her earnings have risen. In 2025 to more than three million kroner. Where might that end?
In 2025 Lea Olsen became Danish champion trainer and champion trainer at the tracks in Aarhus and Aalborg.
In 2024 Lea presented us with a series of good 2-year-olds, and they followed up with good results as 3-year-olds and gave Lea two new classic winners.
Wiggle Wine (Go Go Gadget) won the Danish 1000 Guineas (the Mowerinaløb), and Zarina (Appel Au Maitre) the Svenskt 1000 Guineas.
With earnings of half a million kroner in 2025 Zarina became Lea Olsen’s most successful horse in 2025.
In 2025 too Lea trained several very promising 2-year-olds.
In the stable we find both the Danish winter favourite Beethoven (Goken) and the Swedish winter favourite Albarella (Toronado).
It was the second year running that Lea Olsen won the Vinterfavoriternes Ærespræmie at Klampenborg. In 2024 Zarina won it.
It will be exciting to follow Lea’s horses in the Derby year.
In 2025 Lea won the Svenskt and Danish 1000 Guineas, and she has previously won the Danish St. Leger with New York Strip (Appel Au Maitre) and the Jydsk Derby twice, with King Ferdinand (Elusive City) and Biot (City Light) respectively.
But wins in a Scandinavian Derby or Oaks are still missing.
FAREWELL TO THREE STARS.
Rikke Rohbach Bonde is, together with Bent and Lea Olsen, one of Denmark’s biggest trainers.
Rikke had a decent season, but there were no big wins, and her earnings were lower than last year and than in her best year in 2021, when Stroxx Carlras (Footstepsinthesand) won the Svenskt and Norsk Derby, and Go On Carlras (Harzand) was second in the Danish Derby.
Rikke has now had to say goodbye to the two Carlras horses, who have both gone to stud as a stallion and a broodmare respectively.
Stroxx Carlras and Go On Carlras were throughout their racing careers in training with Rikke Bonde and her husband Nicolaj Stott and earned a total of 3.6 million kroner.
The third star horse to have left Rikke is the legendary King David (Elusive City), who this year starts as a stallion at Stutteri Hjortebo in a partnership between Stutteri Stork and Stutteri Hjortebo.
Rikke’s top scorers in 2025 were Firstof All (Juniper Tree) and Go Go Flame (Go Go Gadget), who both ran right up there in the big 3-year-old races. And they both earned more than 300,000 kroner last season.
It could easily have become a classic win for Firstof All in 2025.
But in the Danish Derby she was narrowly beaten by Grab The Moment (Go Go Gadget), and in the Danish Oaks, where she was favourite, she fell, while in the Danish St. Leger she again had to settle for second place after a long season.
Rikke Bonde has been close to a Danish Derby win several times. Perhaps it will happen in 2026.
MY FORTUNE AT HIS PEAK.
The 2025 season brought 19 wins for Bettina Andersen, which is a record. In earnings terms the season was on a par with the two preceding years.
The stable’s star was My Fortune (Appel au Maitre), who provided the stable with a good third of the year’s earnings.
My Fortune won four of his six starts in 2025, and among other races he won the Dansk Breeders´ Cup, the Breeders’ Trophy Mile and the Skandinavisk Grand Prix.
But other horses also contributed well to the year’s earnings.
Lucien (Hurricane Red) has “only” a strike rate of 17 per cent. But he always runs prominently. In 2025 it became a quarter of a million kroner in earnings, and he can now call himself a millionaire.
Golden Dreams (Girolamo) and – as always – Sandtastic (Footstepsinthesand) also contributed to the stable’s earnings.
Bettina Andersen and her husband Kim Andersen have a number of promising horses in the Derby crop, among them Darlington (Appel Au Maitre), Missing (Red Cactus), King To Be (Moohaajim) and My Dole (Appel Au Maitre), so perhaps a big season lies ahead for the stable.
WILL SØREN JENSEN GET HIS FIFTH DANISH DERBY WIN?
Søren Jensen has been at it a long time. He has passed 70, but he carries on undaunted. And with good reason.
More than half of the horses Søren has in training are promising 3-year-olds. Those attracting most attention at the moment are the Horse of the Year at Klampenborg Cosmopolitan (Make Believe) and the Swedish winter favourite Taifuu (Japan). The latter is wintering in Dubai.
But there are several other 3-year-olds in the stable who may join in. One of them is the unraced Gabriel (Appel Au Maitre). A half-brother to King Ferdinand (Elusive City) and No Surrender (Giant Sandman).
Cosmopolitan and Taifuu gave Søren Jensen an OK 2025 season, but in earnings terms it was nevertheless the lowest of the last five years.
Perhaps 2026 will be a turning point?
NIELS PETERSEN’S HORSES EARNED MORE THAN 10 MILLION KRONER IN 2025.
Danish-born Niels Petersen, who has now had his training quarters at Øvrevoll for many years, will never forget the 2025 season.
In all, Niels Petersen-trained horses earned just over 10 million Danish kroner. That must be a record. And it is as much as the four highest placed trainers resident in Denmark earned put together.
Niels Petersen became champion trainer in his home country Norway with 3.3 million Norwegian kroner in earnings and in Sweden with 6.6 million Swedish kronor.
In Denmark Niels Petersen had to settle for fourth place and 1.5 million Danish kroner.
But Niels Petersen could furthermore enjoy a very successful winter stay in Dubai, where three of his stars, Queen Azteca, Easywithme and War Socks, earned more than 2 million Danish kroner.
The list of big wins is a mile long. Among them were five classic wins.
It became two Derby wins. Grab The Moment (Go Go Gadget) won the Danish Derby and War Socks (Kameko) the Norsk Derby. It could have been wins in all the Scandinavian Derbys if Queen Azteca had won the Svenskt Derby.
It should also be mentioned in that connection that Acapulco Sunrise (Almanzor) won the Jydsk Derby.
Queen Azteca (Sharp Azteca) won the UAE Oaks (Gr.3) at Meydan, Wassim (Zarak) the Danish 2000 Guineas at Klampenborg and Supernova Bling (Starspangledbanner) the Svenskt Oaks at Jägersro.
Before Queen Azteca was sold to the USA she managed to earn just under two million Danish kroner this year in Niels Petersen’s training. Grab The Moment also contributed well to Niels Petersen’s earnings with just under 1.3 million kroner in prize money.
And Mozart, Lord Mountbatten, Easywithme and Wassim all had earnings of around half a million kroner.
It will be interesting to see whether Niels Petersen can live up to the record season of 2025 this year. It will be hard.
Niels Petersen has a big team in Dubai, among them the two promising 3-year-olds Bullet Bling (Violence) and Bruce Almighty (Appel Au Maitre), and Niels Petersen certainly has several more promising 3-year-olds who will take up the fight in the classic races in 2026.
