Lucky Speed wins German Derby

Lucky Speed (9-2) gave jockey Andreas Starke a sixth career win in the $640,000 German Derby at Hamburg on Sunday.

Closing from the back of a field of 19, Lucky Speed took the lead in the final sixteenth and won the Group 1 race by three-quarters of a length over 14-1 Tres Blue. Nordvulkan, a 51-1 shot, finished third, beaten a length.

Ivanhowe, a Group 2 winner in Cologne on June 16, finished eighth as the 2-1 favorite. The first seven finishers in the race over 1 1/2 miles on turf were separated by 2 1/4 lengths.

Lucky Speed won his second consecutive stakes in the German Derby. An Irish-bred by Silvano, Lucky Speed won the Group 3 Bavarian Classic at Munich on May 26. Lucky Speed races for Stall Horondendort and trainer Peter Schiergen, who is best known for winning the 2011 Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe with the filly Danedream.

Lucky Speed gave Schiergen his fourth win in the German Derby. Lucky Speed was unraced as a 2-year-old in 2012 because of a quarantine at the Cologne racetrack caused by an outbreak of equine infectious anemia. The quarantine lasted from early October 2012 to early January.

Starke, 39, won the German Derby for the first time since he and Schiergen were successful with Kamsin in 2008. Schiergen said after Sunday’s race that Lucky Speed could face older horses in Germany later this year.