In a small part of Bavaria, a fishing village on a lake about 30 miles from Munich where rolling countryside rises up to meet the Alps, they know the horse simply as Harry. As in Harry Can Run. To the rest of the world, he is Hurricane Run or just plain Hurricane, superhorse and red-hot favourite for the King George VI and Queen Elizabeth Diamond Stakes at Ascot on Saturday.
Harry, in the delightful phrase of Daniela Nowara, manager of the Ammerland Stud near Munich where the son of Montjeu was born and bred, is a “push-button horse — ask, go”. Rarely has a British debut been so eagerly awaited.
The most relevant question for Saturday is not who will win, but whose finger will be pushing the button. Hurricane Run’s regular rider, Kieren Fallon, has been suspended from riding in the UK by the Horseracing Regulatory Authority pending his trial next year on charges of race-fixing. The High Court is due to rule on Fallon’s appeal against the suspension on Thursday, less than 48 hours before the King George. As Andre Fabre, the colt’s brilliant French trainer, is happy to wait until the last moment for his jockey, on whose nerve one of the great victories in the history of the Arc was forged last autumn, Hurricane Run will probably be declared for the King George without a named jockey.
Plenty will be available, Fabre reasons, if the court rules against the six-times champion, but if anything can lift Fallon’s spirits, it is the prospect of renewing his association with a horse that defined his genius as a race-rider and with a breeder whose patronage he has enjoyed for almost a decade.
Like all the best racing stories, many disparate threads are woven into the tapestry of Hurricane Run. But at its heart lie the passion and vision of Dietrich von Boetticher, a former dressage competitor and Munich lawyer who turned a ramshackle old lakeside farm into one of the most prestigious studs in world racing.
When he came to Ammerland, Von Boetticher found a dilapidated farmhouse, no horses and a few hectares of green grass. The local economy was based on fish from the lake, not thoroughbreds. Now he has 30-odd mares on 90 hectares of land recognised as some of the finest in the country.
“Everyone told me to forget it,” says Von Boetticher of his decision to buy the land in 1989. “Traditional stud country is on the Ruhr and the Rhine. They said I would never have a good horse in Bavaria. But the soil here is created out of the glaciers that once stretched all the way to Munich. It’s beautiful limestone soil, high in calcium, like Ireland. We make good hay here, too.”
In this rich panorama, the strapping son of Montjeu was brought up to enjoy himself and to race. “The horses like it here,” says Von Boetticher, stopping halfway across a field. “They like the views.”
Von Boetticher’s family came from Latvia, but were forced into exile by the Russian invasion of 1940. Dietrich was born in Poland on a long journey west that ended in northern Germany. His parents always viewed Latvia as their home until Dietrich bought them a ticket back to Riga after the collapse of the Soviet Union. “They went and came back, understanding that Germany not Latvia was now their home,” he says.
A cultured and elegant man, Von Boetticher always loved horses, and he was good enough to reach top national level in dressage. He still keeps a stable of dressage horses for competition, though rides less frequently now. “I always wanted to be master of my own world,” he says. “That’s why I became a lawyer.”
Breeding racehorses is a less precise art. But others were soon poring over maps of southern Germany trying to locate the whereabouts of this little stud, which had produced Group One winners of the calibre of Boreal and Borgia. In the late 1990s, the German breeding industry was still suffering from a sense of inferiority alongside the powerhouses of Britain, Ireland, France and the US. By finishing third both in the Arc, behind Peintre Celebre and Pilsudski, and in the Breeders Cup turf at Hollywood Park three months later, Borgia proved that German horses could compete in the international arena.
A sweeping victory for Boreal in the Coronation Cup at Epsom in 2002, the first Group One winner for a German horse outside Germany, and for Marienbard in the Arc the same year merely confirmed the rise of a new power.
But Von Boetticher’s eye for a bargain stretched beyond the judging of thoroughbreds. A video at the Ammerland Gestuet shows Borgia’s victory in the Grand Prix of Baden-Baden in 1997. The jockey works to a familiar rhythm, bringing a smile to the face of Nowara. “Here comes Kieren,” she says. “Up and down, up and down.”
Von Boetticher likes the natural horsemanship of Irish riders. Walter Swinburn had recorded Ammerland’s first major victory on Luigi in the German Derby several years before. But, in the autumn of 1997, Fallon was two months away from becoming champion jockey. He was certainly not the obvious recruit for a horse like Borgia or a race in Baden-Baden.
“It was a big move for him, too, because Borgia was an outsider on the international scene,” says Von Boetticher. “But I always studied English racing and I liked his way of riding. It’s hard to find a rider as involved as Kieren is. He doesn’t just sit on a horse and ride, he educates it and gives it all he’s got.” Von Boetticher recalls Boreal’s victory at Epsom. “Even though he won by four or five lengths, Kieren was out of breath when he was being interviewed afterwards. He’d put so much into it.”
Ask Nowara to tell you a story or two about Harry and she merely laughs. “You know, the problem is that the best horses are always the most straightforward. He was simple.” Nowara was trained as a textile engineer but, having ridden as a child, she wanted to work with horses. She applied for the job at Ammerland and has not looked back. Her mother still thinks she could get a proper job.
“Some horses give you a feeling if you handle them every day,” she says. “Harry gave me that feeling.” Von Boetticher felt it, too, and instead of sending the son of Montjeu to his regular German trainer, he was dispatched to Andre Fabre in Chantilly. Two days later, Nowara was surprised to receive a fax from the famously aloof French trainer.
“I’m impressed by your Montjeu colt,” it read.
“That was unusual, perhaps the first sign we had something special here,” says Nowara. “Later, he wrote saying, ‘Your Montjeu is a good mover’. When we rang to find out what was going on, he said: ‘Don’t worry, I’ll look after him’.
Nowara was standing next to Fabre in a hospitality box as Hurricane Run was unleashed by Fallon up the rail to win the Arc last autumn. It was the first time she’d seen the trainer shout at the television. The fact that Coolmore had come calling through the summer and Ammerland were no longer the owners did not lessen Nowara’s emotions. It was still her Harry winning the Arc.
Electrocutionist and Heart’s Cry will provide the main opposition on Saturday, but with the field disappointingly short of contenders from the Classic generation, the King George is set to prove what they already knew in Bavaria. Harry can run.
King George VI and Queen Elizabeth Diamond Stakes, Saturday, BBC1, 4.20pm
