The soft ground in Munich on Saturday clearly played to his strengths as he bounced out of the gates under Adrie de Vries, taking 5.2s to reach 30 mph and this got him into the lead. From that position, De Vries was able to control the pace before kicking for home once the field had rounded the final turn, ultimately running out a comfortable 7 length winner with the fastest final 3 furlongs in the race. These conditions clearly suited Bay City Roller, who recorded the highest average stride frequency in the field (2.22 per second) and the highest top speed figure (37.54 mph), which reached their peak in the 12th furlong when De Vries asked him to stretch. A winning time of 2:38.13 is actually par for the course in the race. Bay City Roller was just 0.67s slower than Assistent had been 12 months ago and his winning time ranked 5th in the last decade, quicker than the likes of Alpinista (2021) and Junko (2023). This was an enterprising ride from De Vries, who committed his horse for home in difficult conditions and exploited the fact that several of his main rivals would have ground to make up in testing conditions that were far from ideal. It would perhaps be a slightly simplistic approach to say that those in behind didn’t handle the ground, especially when the likes of Rashford, Junko and Ami de Vega have form on Soft ground in the past. However, as an improving 3-year-old, Bay City Roller was able to maintain a consistent gallop and that speed was enough to get most of them out of their comfort zones. Perhaps Convergent did have a valid excuse and didn’t handle the ground, he has had a busy autumn campaign and certainly didn’t run his race under William Buick, finishing a tired 7th after being outpaced by the winner in the final quarter of a mile. He will hopefully be back next season and it would seem best to put a line through this run, but either way his underperformance should not take the gloss from a top class performance from the winner. 

It would also be too simplistic to assume that this was a “weaker” Group 1 race and that as a result, Bay City Roller should be underestimated. Soft ground may prove to be the key for him and it was good to hear that he will be back in 2026 for a 4-year-old campaign. If he gets similar conditions next year, there is every reason to think that he will be competitive at the highest level. Sir Mark Prescott won this race with Alpinista in 2021 and although Tiffany is not quite in the same league, she did come into this race last year following a 3rd placed finish behind Kalpana in the Fillies and Mares race on Champions Day at Ascot. She actually ran a better run-out speed than Kalpana (31 mph) at Ascot and she was a G2 winner at Baden Baden in August 2024. She finished 2nd here 12-months ago and has run a very similar time to finish in the same position 12-months later. There’s no obvious reason to think that she hasn’t run her race to finish 2nd, especially given the excellent effort she put up on her return in September to chase home Sibayan in the Preis Von Europa and yet Bay City Roller has pulled clear with ease. If we allow for the 2 lbs that she had to concede to him, it would still suggest that Bay City Roller has run close to a mark of 120 to win this contest, recording the best run-out speed in the process. It would seem that the European turf season has produced one last top class performance before it goes quiet over the winter months.