TDN Weekend December 2016 Issue 9
Issue link: https://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/920057
tatoes, but it was clinched on condition that Stefan become a partner in a racehorse called Toamasina. If the soothsayer was consulted back then we all need her number because this was one propitious deal. The Tiberian fairy tale begins with this handshake. A fortune foretold. Toamasina had speed and talent, winning three times and running second in a one-mile Listed race at four before retiring to stud – Julian's stud. She proved a little less adept in her second career, pro- ducing just one foal in her first four seasons. As hope she might breed a star started to dwindle, so the keep bills began to amass and Julian was cut in for 25% to take the edge off them. Meanwhile, under the glint- ing shade of the copperbeech avenues at the Haras du Logis, another story had started to unfold… Heiko and Helmut had an elderly chestnut mare, so tall and long and sway-backed that, if you squinted, you could imagine you were looking a broad undulat- ing landscape, the rolling Tuscan hills for example. She was, in fact, an absolute queen of a mare: Thekla – look her up. Her second foal was a Champion colt who won the German 2,000 Guineas. Her first filly be- came the grand-dam of a Champion in France. Anoth- er won the German 1,000 Guineas and ran third in the oh-so-chic Prix de Diane at Chantilly in June, 1995. The next filly bred a G1 winner and is the grand-dam of a German Oaks winner; another bred yet another German Champion. And that, dear reader, is the edit- ed version. I first met Thekla as a barren 19-year-old. She'd failed to foal for three seasons on the trot, and in her dotage had been sent to one of Julian's stallions, a fellow sub-fertile pensioner called Zieten, once a zippy son of Danzig who had won the Middle Park