Written off too early: How coaches fight their way back to the top
There are five or six coaches who have dominated the action in the big races in Germany in recent years: Peter Schiergen, Henk Grewe, Andreas Wöhler, Markus Klug, Waldemar Hickst and Jean-Pierre Carvalho are the trainers who have had and continue to have the most starters in the top events and have also been able to record the most successes. This is unlikely to change much in 2022. Nevertheless, it is also nice to see one or two coaches appear in the top class who have become quieter in recent years.
It`s easy to be written off, but with meticulous work and perseverance, even less pleasant times can be overcome. The best example of this is Düsseldorf coach Sascha Smrczek. In his heyday he had 80 or 90 horses, now there are around 50. The four-legged friends he prepared won 26 and 22 (at home and abroad combined) in 2021 and 2020, respectively, in the past there were around twice as many. But in 2022 everything is different. The stable form has been terrific for weeks, with Dato scoring a Group II win in the Carl Jaspers Prize. The list victory with Lord Leoso at Hoppegarten at Easter was also surprising and a great trainer performance. Already 16 victories had been accumulated before 30 April. With eleven victories in Germany, Smrczek also leads the statistics.
Marco Klein, Katja Gernreich and Bohumil Nedorostek also appear in the top 10 at the moment, stables whose horse stock has been reduced recently. But they are back and show that they have not forgotten anything about their craft. That is very pleasing, because diversity is what makes our sport. Some people had already written off a man like Christian Sprengel, but now he has fought his way back from five horses to more than 20. It is hard to understand why Mario Hofer, a trainer with over 2,000 successes, only has 17 horses on his training list. Every fifth of his starters this year has already won, so good work is still being done here.
