The Gestüt Schlenderhan-based sire Adlerflug has always been amongst the top stallions standing in Germany and has now secured his first domestic Champion Sire title (prize money won) by a comfortable margin. The 2020 season, particularly with regard to his three-year-olds, was easily the best the striking chestnut has had so far, and it looks like there will be more to come. As a result, Adlerflug’s fee has been raised from €10,000 to €16,000, but that still looks like money well spent in every respect.
Adlerflug is owned by a syndicate of which the charismatic entrepreneur Lars-Wilhelm Baumgarten is one of the leading shareholders. His smart betting scheme for the domestic racing scene following the first lockdown in the spring proved to be very successful and has certainly helped to keep the sport alive over here.
“We recognised Adlerflug’s great potential at an early stage and naturally supported him with our best mares, and this will be the case again for the coming season.
“Adlerflug will be covering his best book to date in 2021 with numerous international breeders having booked nominations and, looking at his fee, I can’t think of any other stallion with a ratio of 2% Group 1 winners amongst his progeny of racing age being available for this kind of money.
“The coronavirus crisis has had a damaging effect all over, especially as our country does not receive any aid from the state, but we are working on new ideas. Giving up is not an option, as racing is a passion!”
Adlerflug’s figures are quite impressive. In ten crops he has 289 foals registered. His eight crops of racing age comprise 247 offspring of which 149 (60%) have run to date and of these 87 (58%) are winners. With regard to Black-type horses, he is the sire of 12 Group winners with five being at the highest level, including the 2020 three-year-olds In Swoop and Torquator Tasso. His other Group 1 winners comprise In Swoop’s full-brother Ito, the two-time “Horse of the Year” Iquitos and the Preis der Diana-German Oaks heroine Lacazar. They head a career list of 16 Stakes winners and a further 13 Stakes performers, which means 11% of his runners are Stakes winners and nearly 20% have achieved Black type.
His 2017 crop comprised 34 foals of which 22 went into training. These include seven separate Stakes performers headed by the Group 1 Deutsches Derby hero and Group I Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe and Group 1 Grand Prix de Paris runner-up In Swoop and his contemporary Torquator Tasso, winner of the Group 1 Grosser Preis von Berlin and the runner-up in the Deutsches Derby, as well as a strong finishing third in the Group I Grosser Preis von Baden.
Adlerflug’s son In Swoop wins the Group 1 Deutsches Derby, prior to finishing runner-up in both the Group 1 Grand Prix de Paris and Group 1 Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe
Other three-year-old Stakes performers were the Listed Derby Trial victor Dicaprio, who was runner-up to Torquator Tasso in the aforementioned Grosser Preis von Berlin, and the Listed placed Manoucheer, Americana, Blue Dream and Slogan.
Adlerflug also had 59 two-year-olds in training in Europe, with his leading performers being the Group 3 Herzog von Ratibor-Rennen victor Mythico and the runaway winner and subsequent Listed Ascendant Stakes runner-up Alenquer.
Bred and raced in the colours of Gestüt Schlenderhan, Germany’s most traditional and oldest privately owned stud, Adlerflug himself won the Group 1 Deutsches Derby in 2007 and went on to further Group 1 glory at four when taking the Deutschland-Preis before finishing runner-up in the Grosser Preis von Baden.
Gestüt Schlenderhan celebrated its 150th anniversary in 2019 and is the owner-breeder of an impressive 19 Deutsches Derby winners. The stud has not only had a major impact on the domestic breeding and racing scene, but has also left it’s mark at the highest level internationally via the exploits of such excellent producers as the legendary champion Schwarzgold and, of course, the Lombard mare Allegretta, herself the ancestress of the world’s leading sire influence Galileo.
Gestüt Schlenderhan celebrated its 150th anniversay in 2019. Apart from Adlerflug, it has also stood Monsun, four times Champion Sire in Germany, whose life-sized statue stands in front of the main house
“Adlerflug has now established himself in the ranks of a proven Group 1 sires, and his fee is excellent value for money,” says the stud’s long-time manager Gebhard Apelt. “He will cover eight of our own mares in 2021 – that is a third of out total broodmare band. Looking at his prospects for 2021 under the given circumstances, I hope that we can maintain the current standard.”
Adlerflug is by the triple Group 1 winning Breeders‘ Cup Turf hero In The Wings (Sadler’s Wells), who proved himself a leading sire of sires and has four individual Group 1 winners in Germany alone to his credit. These include the triple German Champion Sire Soldier Hollow, who also enjoyed another fine season and was runner-up to his paternal half-brother on the 2020 leading sires’ list.
Adlerflug’s dam, Aiyana, is by Last Tycoon and his pedigree features Northern Dancer 3x4. The second dam, Alya, ran second in the then Group 2 Preis der Diana-German Oaks. This chestnut daughter of Lombard is a full-sister to the aforementioned blue hen Allegretta and this formidable Schlenderhan dam line features prominently in the pedigrees of a large percentage of the world‘s leading thoroughbred horses by now.
Allegretta’s main claim to fame comes as the dam of the Group 1 Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe heroine Urban Sea, who has four Group 1 winners to her credit, headed by the Epsom Derby hero and stellar sire Galileo (Sadler’s Wells) and the fellow Epsom Derby hero Sea The Stars, the latter having also emulated his dam’s success in the Arc.
With his outstanding race and stud record, together with the fact that he’s so closely related to the super sire Galileo, Adlerflug must surely have an appeal to breeders way beyond the confines of his native land.
