Mirco Demuro might have found his summer based in England slightly disappointing, the internationally-acclaimed jockey having struggled to break through in the UK. However, he has slotted straight back into the swing of things during his current Japanese stint, having partnered the 2010 Japanese Derby winner Eishin Flash to victory last weekend in the Autumn Tenno Sho in Tokyo.
While that result might, therefore, have been well received in Italy, it would have gone down even better in Germany, Eishin Flash hailing from one of that country’s best families.
Eishin Flash’s dam Moonlady comes from a damline which has been in Germany for many generations. A daughter of the former top-class German middle-distance performer Platini, Moonlady was a multiple Group winner in her homeland before crossing the Atlantic to win a Grade Three race at Aqueduct in the year 2000.
To produce Eishin Flash, Moonlady was covered by King’s Best (who himself hails from the same German family which has produced the likes of Galileo and Sea The Stars) at Kildangan Stud in 2006 before being exported in-foal to Japan.
There was a second top-level triumph for German breeding the same day when Sortilege won the Group 1 Premio Lydia Tesio in Milan. Trained in Germany by Andreas Wohler (and ridden on Sunday by Newmarket-based Italian jockey Andrea Atzeni) Sortilege is a daughter of the late Tiger Hill and the Monsun mare Sahel, a full-sister to two winners of the German Derby (Samum and Schiaparelli) and one winner of the German Oaks (Salve Regina).
This family has been in Germany for less long, Sahel’s dam Sacarina, a member of the first crop of Old Vic, having been bred by Darley in the UK. However, going farther back this too is a German family: Sacarina’s dam Brave Lass was bred in Britain by the late Jim Joel, but Brave Lass’ French-bred dam Bravour and her German-bred granddam Bacarole had both been stakes winners in Germany, the former having landed Germany’s equivalent of the 1,000 Guineas (the Schwarzgold-Rennen) in 1966.
Interestingly, when Sahel’s sister Salve Regina won the German Oaks in 2002, she was chased home by Midnight Angel, a half-sister (by Acatenango) to the aforementioned Moonlady.
