On Sunday afternoon Thore Hammer-Hansen won Germany’s biggest two-year-old race, the Preis des Winterfavoriten (Gr.3) over 1,600 metres in Cologne. The win came aboard the Henk Grewe-trained Western (Saxon Warrior), who scored in commanding fashion by six and a half lengths for a first prize of €85,000.
Western was sent off a warm favourite after winning on his debut at Munich on 26 July, and he now heads into the winter as the unbeaten favourite for next year’s Deutsches Derby (Gr.1) in Hamburg.
The winner is owned by Cologne-based Eckhard Sauren, for whom Thore Hammer-Hansen has ridden as private jockey since November 2023. Western was bred by Gestüt Röttgen.
“He is a completely different horse on the racecourse than he is at home. He really does seem to know when it matters”, Henk Grewe told galopponline.de after the race. “We are finished for this year. The Derby is the target next year. How we get there is something we still have to discuss”.
The Hamburger Renn-Club has just confirmed the date: the 158th Deutsches Derby will be run on Saturday 3 July 2027 in Hamburg. It is the first time in the long history of the race that the Derby has been decided on a Saturday, and the club puts the switch down to economics and to the international betting pool World Pool, which carried six races from the 2026 Derby card.
There are few horses that have grown close to my heart. Flatten the Curve and Assistent are among them, and now he is in that company too.
Thore Hammer-Hansen
The triumph in the Preis des Winterfavoriten (Gr.3) was one of five wins for Thore Hammer-Hansen over the weekend. On Saturday he won three times at Mülheim, and on Sunday he followed up with two winners in Cologne. The other was Questa Luna (Sea The Moon), who took the BBAG Auktionsrennen over the same trip – also for Eckhard Sauren and Henk Grewe.
Thore is on course for his third German jockeys’ championship in a row, and he is currently 17 winners clear of his nearest rival, Bauyrzhan Murzabayev.
The Danish-German star is also the only rider in Germany to have passed one million euros in total earnings, and he has a strike rate of better than 20 per cent with 73 winners from 348 rides.
