White Turf: A Race Meeting Like No Other

In the fortnight between Feb. 6 and 19, around 150,000 people trekked to St Moritz, the stunning Swiss town in the Engadine valley where mountains fill the eye at every turn. Their pilgrimage was undertaken in support of the country's major sporting preoccupation, downhill skiing, as the 2017 Alpine World Ski Championships were staged on slopes high above the town.

With some of the finest pistes of Europe in their back yard, it's understandable that pretty much everyone in the region is a skier. In fact, Switzerland's first ski school sprang up in St Moritz, and the town is also responsible for the equine variation of the sport known as skijoring, whereby skiers are towed behind galloping horses, which nowadays are thoroughbreds.

In the racing world, St Moritz is renowned as the host of one of the swankiest meetings of the year, White Turf, which takes place over three consecutive Sundays in February. The final raceday will be held this coming weekend and it's no hollow marketing claim to say that it's a race meeting like no other.

Staged on the frozen lake in the centre of town, the seven-race cards feature a mixture of trotting, some regular Flat races (regular apart from the fact that they're on ice, which is currently 62cm deep), and one skijoring race each week.

Skijoring has developed in a similar way to steeplechasing in that its origins spring from a competition between local country folk. In the case of steeplechasing, now more widely known as National Hunt racing, two riders literally raced from church to church in neighbouring villages in County Cork, using the steeples to guide them across country. Similarly, the first known skijoring race, which was run in 1906, took place along the road between St Moritz and Chamfer, the competitors starting at one-minute intervals. The gang at ITM will be delighted to know that the winning horse, Blitz, was bred in Ireland.

The following year marked the inaugural White Turf meeting, with the racing then transferred to the lake. Having been fortunate enough to be at last Sunday's race meeting to write a travelogue to be published in TDN Weekend later this year, it was impossible to overlook the fact that for the crowd of around 9,500, the most important race of the day was the 2,700-metre skijoring contest.

The 'driver' who wins the most points across the three races each year earns the much-coveted title of 'King of the Engadine'. Over the 110-year history of the White Turf only 11 kings have been crowned and it is a badge of honour for the locals, as is evident by the reception given to the most successful current skijorer, Franco Moro, the seven-time King of the Engadine who hasn't missed a season in 33 years.

He last won the title in 2015, when winning two of the three legs at St Moritz with Barbara Keller's Dreamspeed (Ire) (Barathea {Ire}), a former Investec Derby Trial winner when trained by Andrew Balding who adapted well to the switch to his owner's homeland and being asked to race on snow and ice.

“You can tell quite quickly whether or not horses will take to racing here,” says German trainer Christian von der Recke, who oversaw the second phase of Dreamspeed's career and regularly takes a team of about ten horses with him to St Moritz from his main stable in Cologne.

“Some of them don't like the kickback but they wear special shoes so they don't slip and it's amazing how quickly the horses accept a skier behind them rather than a rider on top.”

Moro, with his rugged tan and piercing blue eyes, looks the archetypal ski instructor, so it's no surprise to learn that he is a former director of St Moritz Ski School whose teaching skills have been put to good use in bringing on the next generation of drivers for his beloved sport.

“We take them up into the mountains and they have to pass a skiing test,” he says. “We have to know they are very good skiers before they can have a licence for skijoring.”

Surprisingly, the runners for the skijoring are loaded into stalls rather than racing from a tape start, with the drivers obliged to crouch low to obtain the speediest start possible.

Moro adds, “The most dangerous part of the race is the start. It is important to get out fast and keep straight to the turn. What you don't want is for other horses in the race to gallop on your skis.”

One of his current protégées, Valeria Walther, successfully completed her first race last Sunday but it is another lady driver, Valeria Holinger, who is currently in pole position to become the first Queen of the Engadine.

Holinger, clad from head to toe in shocking pink, led the nine-runner field throughout the Credit Suisse Grosser Preis von Sils in a repeat performance of her victory at the opening meeting. Her front-running partner is also female. The Peter Schiergen-trained 5-year-old Dylan Thomas (Ire) mare Usbekia (Ire) is a half-sister to Godolphin's Australian Group 3 winner Havana Coooler (Ire) (Hurricane Run {Ire}), and the pair needs only to finish third this Sunday to claim the title.

Over dinner and a debrief in the racing crowd's favourite haunt, La Baracca, on Sunday night, Moro concedes that, with two third-place finishes, he is unlikely to regain his title this year. But as the music grows louder and Holinger takes to the dancefloor with her team, Moro and fellow driver Adrian von Gunten, currently lying in second, can be seen talking quietly in the corner, no doubt already plotting tactics for the final. The King isn't ready to surrender his throne just yet.