Nereid (horse)
Nereid | |
![]() Nereid |
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Race: | English blood |
Father: | Laland or Count Isolani |
Mother: | Nella da Gubbio |
Mother, father: | Grand Parade |
Gender: | mare |
Year of birth: | 1933 |
Year of death: | 1943 |
Country: | Germany |
Colour: | brown |
Breeder: | Erlenhof stud |
Owner: | Erlenhof stud |
Trainer: | Adrian von Borcke |
Record: | 10 starts: 10 wins |
GAG : | 107 |
Prize amount: | 178,500 RM |
Greatest wins, titles and awards | |
Greatest victories | |
Blue and Brown Ribbon from Germany 1936 Diana Award 1936 |
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Infobox last modified on: August 5th, 2010. |
Nereide (1933 - April 22, 1943) was an English thoroughbred horse owned by Heinrich Thyssen . The mare was bred by Laland out of Nella da Gubbio at Erlenhof stud .
Nereide came from German breeding only in the stallion line. Her great-grandfather was Hannibal , who sired a total of four Derby winners. One of them was Nereide's grandfather Fels , who took 18 wins and two second places out of 20 starts. The famous Festa was the mother of rock . All other ancestors came from abroad, mainly from England and the USA. Her mother Nella da Gubbio was bred by the famous Italian breeder Federico Tesio and was the daughter of the English derby winner Grand Parade .
Racing career
Already at the age of two, Nereide acquired the reputation of a wonder mare and won everything a two-year-old could win. There have been several similarly successful two-year-old mares in the history of German thoroughbred breeding, but Nereide was the only one who was able to continue her triumphant advance as a three-year-old.
Usually Nereide took the lead right from the start and never gave it up until the finish. It was different at the German Derby . Here the oleander son Periander set a hell of a pace. On the home stretch, however, Nereide made short work of the challenger and won over the top. The result of this hunt was a new derby record, which was only equalized by Athenagoras in 1973 and undercut by Lando in 1993 . The derby record time shows that Nereide's superiority was not based on the weakness of the competition, but on their own strength.
After winning the Blue Ribbon in Hamburg, Nereide also won the Brown Ribbon in Munich in 1936 . She also defeated the one year older French exceptional mare Corrida . Charles Elliot, the rider of the defeated Corrida, said after the race that there was probably no other horse in Europe that could beat Corrida like this. While Corrida won the Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe a short time later and repeated this victory the following year, Nereide stepped from the racing stage undefeated, uninjured and actually never really challenged.
Nereide's trainer Adrian von Borcke , who looked after a total of seven derby winners for the Erlenhof stud farm, including exceptional horses like Ticino and Orsini , said at the end of his career that Nereide was the best horse he had ever trained.
Breeding career
Nereide also showed great potential in breeding, but the Second World War and bad luck in general made sure that Nereide's blood is hardly to be found in German thoroughbred breeding today. Nereide was only paired with the best stallions of their time. Among them Athanasius , Pharis stolen by the National Socialists in France and especially oleander . With him she sired the promising derby winner Nordlicht . Like almost all other immediate descendants of Nereide, he was abducted abroad after the war. Nereide did not live to see the end of the war and died on April 22, 1943, giving birth to a foal.
After the war, there were intensive efforts to bring the northern lights back from the USA, at least on loan, in order to revive the German thoroughbred breed. All these efforts failed and Nordlicht died in the USA in 1968 without ever having seen Germany again. However, it has left its mark in France. Fils de Roi (by Nordlicht) won the prestigious Grand Prix de Deauville in 1959 and is u. A. Sire of Sabelium (second in the Prix Jean de Chaudenay and Prix Gladiateur ) and of Soyeux (winner in the Grand Prix de Deauville and third in the Grand Prix de Saint-Cloud ).
Nereides blood lives on today exclusively through her first son Nuvolari with oleander. After all, Nuvolari is Orsini's mare father and he also left lasting traces in the Hanoverian warmblood breed . Based on the fame of her daughter, her mother Nella da Gubbio succeeded in what her older daughter failed to do, namely building up a large family of mares, the Erlenhofer N-line.
In honor of Nereide, the Nereide race for mares has been held on the horse racing track in Gelsenkirchen-Horst since 1955 . After the Gelsenkirchen racetrack was closed, this list race was initially relocated to Mülheim and has been held in Munich since 2003.