Page 79 - Demo

profile waldgeist
WALDGEIST’S VICTORY in the 2019 Qatar Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe was significant in many ways.
The chestnut son of Galileo gave his trainer
André Fabre a record eighth win in France’s most celebrated race.
It gave his sire a second Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe winner following Found allowing him to emulate his sire Sadler’s Wells, who produced the Arc winners Carnegie and Montjeu.
It was also a second Arc for Waldgeist’s co-breeder Dietrich von Boetticher’s Gestüt Ammerland, also the breeder of Hurricane Run.
In 2020, Waldgeist starts his stud career based at Ballylinch Stud in Ireland alongside Lope De Vega who raced in the same Ammerland colours.
Waldgeist’s Arc win and his impressive career were also a crowning achievement for two other studs.
For Newsells Park Stud, the British farm where Waldgeist was raised and where his dam Waldlerche and grand-dam Waldmark have always been based, it was a new pinnacle which fulfilled the ambitions Klaus Jacobs held when he bought the farm at the beginning of the 21st century.
Gestüt Ravenberg is a small stud in the north-west of Germany at Gutersloh, which is
found between Munster and Hanover. Ravensberg is small by any standards with
only three active mares and yet the current owner Johann Delius, and his father before him, have succeeded in nurturing a female family which has become one of the most potent in Europe.
The six-year-old mare Waldrun was purchased for the stud in 1949 and this winning daughter of Alchemist founded
the dynasty which made the stud famous in Germany and has led, nine generations later, to Waldgeist and several other international Group 1 winners of recent years.
Klaus Jacobs, the Swiss-based German born industrialist, purchased Newsells Park in 2000.
In his mid-60s the chocolate, coffee and temporary employment tycoon’s plan was
to emulate his father Walther Jacobs, who had founded Gestüt Fährhof in Germany and made it the country’s leading stud farm.
“One of the first things Mr Jacobs did was to buy a few filly foals,” says Gary Coffey, Newsells Park Stud’s racing manager. “When I first visited the stud the following summer for my job interview Robert Acton, who
was then the general manager, showed me
a group of yearling fillies in a paddock and asked me what I thought of them. I said I liked the chestnut although she looked a little fat – the chestnut filly was Waldmark.”
Waldmark had been bought privately from
The day of days for Waldgeist: beating wonder mare Enable to win the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe
www.internationalthoroughbred.net 79