Yasmin Almenräder - a rising star in German racing
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By David Conolly-Smith
The middle-sized town of Mülheim an der Ruhr (population 170,000) is, as the name implies, situated on the river Ruhr which gives its name to the whole area. It is north of Düsseldorf, the capital of the state of North-Rhine-Westphalia—Germany´s most populous “land”. It is located just south of the industrial centres of Essen and Duisburg.
It is also an important racing and training centre. There has been thoroughbred racing here since the 19th century, but the current racecourse, known as the Raffelberg, was built in 1910. Despite damage through fires and flooding, and even more by bombing during World War II, the track thrived and was one of the most important in western Germany for the last half of the past century. In particular, two local trainers scored spectacular successes. Uwe Ostmann trained here from 1985 to 2013, and his Diana stable, where the principal owner was Gestüt Auenquelle, owned by Karl-Dieter Ellerbracke, also boss of the sales company BBAG; and Peter Michael Endres, also president of the race club at Düsseldorf. Ostmann—still hale and hearty at the age of 80—was one of the top addresses in Germany for a quarter of a century, winning the German Derby with Luigi in 1988 and the Preis von Europa in 1995 with Gonbarda. Gonbarda was later sold to Godolphin and dam of Champion Stakes winner and top sire Farhh, as well as just about every important race in the German calendar. Later arriving on the scene was the colourful Werner Baltromei, who enjoyed a meteoric career before his tragic death from cancer at the age of 49 in 2012. Baltromei was the first German trainer to target the top French races, and from his Mülheim base he sent out such stars as Le Miracle (winner of the Prix du Cadran in 2007, and also third in the Ascot Gold Cup) as well as Lady Marian (winner of the Prix de l´Opera in 2008).
Those were great days for Mülheim both as a training centre and a racecourse, but there were also black clouds on the horizon. A golf course was built there, opening in 2000, and there was soon a great deal of friction between the golfers and the race club, which was gradually falling on hard times. It lost its two best races—the Gp1 Preis der Diana (German Oaks), which moved to Düsseldorf in 2004, and the Preis der Winterkönigin, Germany's top race for 2yo fillies, which is now run at Baden-Baden´s October meeting. For about a decade, Mülheim only staged three days of racing a year and these only at a very low level. The old race club finally gave up the ghost and declared insolvency in 2017.
A new race club was formed later that year; the new president was Gestüt Auenquelle´s Karl-Dieter Ellerbracke, and the new committee included prominent owners Hans Bierkämper (Stall Mandarin) and Werner Krüger (UNIA Racing), while Günter Gudert, previously at Hamburg and then Düsseldorf, took over as clerk of the course and racecourse manager. At the time Bierkämper was 77, Ellerbracke and Krüger were both 74 and Gudert 69; however, they had plenty of youthful idealism and ambitious ideas; and they were prepared to back up these ideas with the necessary funds. Huge investments were made in bringing the facilities at the racecourse and in the training centre up to the highest modern standards. Even in the relatively short period that the new team has been in charge, it is clear that this investment has paid off massively.
There has been a huge upswing in the fortunes of both the racecourse and the training centre. There were seven race days in both 2019 and 2020 (despite the ravages of COVID-19). Mülheim has restored their highly successful winter fixtures, in particular their Boxing Day fixture (December 26) was traditionally extremely popular, attracting Kempton-like crowds (not in 2020, alas) and is now reactivated. This is all the more welcome since the future of racing at Neuss, one of Germany's two all-weather tracks, looks highly doubtful, to say the least. They have also succeeded in bringing back black type racing to Mülheim, with the listed Diana-Trial in July and the listed Silbernes Band der Ruhr, Germany's longest flat race, in October.
Racecourse facilities are much improved, and the racing surface is now one of the best in Germany. The training centre has also surged into the kind of prominence it previously enjoyed more than 20 years ago. When the new race club took over, there were fewer than 100 horses in training at Mülheim; now there are well over 200, and still counting. It is now the second largest training centre in the country, after Cologne.
“In my opinion, the training facilities at Mülheim are now the best of any German racecourse,” says 46-year-old Yasmin Almenräder, who has herself contributed a great deal to this success story.
Yasmin with German Derby hopeful Nacido.
The youngest of three sisters, she was born in nearby Essen and grew up in a horsey, but not racing, family. Her father, a car dealer, was a passionate rider and a successful show jumper and three-day-eventer. There were always horses about the place, and Yasmin “could ride before she could walk,” as she puts it. Her mother worked in advertising but also rode dressage. They were all great animal lovers, and her father always impressed on his daughters the principle: “Animals always come first, and human beings second,” Sadly, her father died when she was 16, and the family moved later to Verden in northern Germany, a leading equestrian centre. A typical horse-mad teenager, she was soon riding out for local trainers. The same year, she qualified as an amateur jockey; her first winner came in 1992 on a horse named Figiell at the small country track of Großenkneten for permit-holder Heiko Kienemann. She had just turned 18, and she went on to ride some 50 winners, including a FEGENTRI race in Canada.
While the family was living in Wuppertal, Yasmin had started riding regular work for top Cologne trainer Bruno Schütz. “I had to leave home at 4 a.m. to take the train, and I did so several times a week, therefore often missing school. In the end, the school complained to my mother that I was spending too much time on horseback and too little time in class; so I had to concentrate more on schoolwork.” However it was at this time that she really fell in love with thoroughbred horses and also first considered the idea of making racing her profession. In 1995, at 21, she received her licence as a permit-holder, i.e., training exclusively horses owned by herself or her immediate family. In fact, it was mainly for her mother, and she succeeded in winning a few races, often ridden by herself.
Trainer Werner Baltromei.
From 1998 to 2000, she worked for Michael Trybuhl in Mülheim, in fact in the same stable where she now trains. In 2006, she qualified; that was a good year for German racing. Her course also included Markus Klug (four-time champion trainer in Germany) and Frenchman Jean-Pierre Carvalho, usually known as “Chippi”, who is now her nextdoor neighbour. At the time she was pregnant with her daughter Lisa-Sophie, now 12; the father, from whom she is long since separated, is an IT engineer designing websites for bookmakers. In 2009, she finally received her full licence as a public trainer. In the meantime, Werner Baltromei had succeeded Michael Trybuhl at the Mülheim yard, and she was his head lad until his sad death in 2012. His widow Christina took over the yard and installed ex-jockey William Mongil as trainer. That did not work out well, and he left a couple of years later. Yasmin Almenräder finally took over the stable in 2014, originally as Christina´s employee but since 2018, she has been her own boss and has formed a limited company, Trainingsbetrieb Almenräder Rennpferde GmbH to run things. “The company pays me a modest salary; in fact, my head lad gets paid more than me,” she says. Christina Baltromei is still involved and also rides out for Yasmin on a regular basis, and the atmosphere is very friendly, relaxed and harmonious.
Head lad and right-hand man Artur Chlipala.
Several members of the team are still there from the days of Werner Baltromei, notably Anke Woodburn (ex-wife of jockey Kevin), who is the stable secretary and runs the office and is “absolutely indispensable”; and head lad Polish-born Artur Chlipala. “He is my right hand man and knows everything there is to know about horses,” says Almenräder. She also praises the Trybuhl family, who was a great help in the early days; and Wilhelm Feldmann (always known, for obvious reasons, as “Kojak”), who is the racing manager for Gestüt Hachtsee (owners of Le Miracle and Lady Marian, and who helped her to get established).
Yasmin with 2nd jockey Anna van den Troost.
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