Gallop trainer Steinberg: At racing pace in the history books

Highly concentrated, Sarah Steinberg does her laps.

She is sitting on the stallion Mount Everest, who is taking his first steps into professional life on the covered horse walker.

"Careful development of the horses is very important," says the 34-year-old, who has her spacious stables at the lower end of the Riem racecourse in the south-west of Munich.

"Sensible muscle build-up is essential because it keeps the horses healthier through the season." Her partner, top jockey Rene Piechulek, controls the pace of training from the outside.

"We break in the yearlings in the stable ourselves, only Rene and I do that," explains Steinberg.

Thoroughbreds are bred to be precocious, and their racing career, which often only lasts a few years, can begin at the age of two.

Sarah Steinberg also started early, as a child, with western riding on the family horses.

Looking for a job that would allow her to work with horses, she came across galloping by accident.

In 2005 she began an apprenticeship as a racing rider.

Two victories in the saddle are on record, but training quickly became her passion.

In 2012 she graduated as a master horseman and gained experience with greats in the sport such as Markus Klug and Peter Schiergen - both champion trainers several times.

“I prefer to be on a horse”

Nevertheless, it was quite a surprise that in 2015 the sleep system entrepreneur Hans-Gerd Wernicke chose Steinberg as the successor to Wolfgang Figge for his racehorse training center RTC in Riem.

Wernickes Stable Salzburg has had great success with Figge, especially with the exceptional mare Night Magic, who won three races in the highest category, Group I.

Steinberg started small, with a dozen older starters.

Her trademark: she leads the horses herself on the day of the race, which is rather unusual.

That has to do with personnel costs, but also because she is learning so much about horses and "because I don't have to be around people, I prefer to be with horses".

Steinberg quickly made a name for herself, winning her first group race in 2016 with Night Wish.

In 2020, five group wins were achieved in one season.

This year she even rose to the Olympus of Group I winners - through the four-year-old Mendocino in the Grand Prix of Baden.

Then Wernicke gave her the biggest compliment: "She is first class as a human being, and as a trainer she is first class."

"He is my favorite horse"

In Germany, Steinberg is only the third woman in 200 years of German gallop sport, after Erika Mäder and Andrea Bertram, to have achieved this.

Why do so few women make it to the top?

"You have to have a different hardness, women tend to be softer, that could be a problem in training," says Steinberg.

"You're not allowed to go to a pony farm, and I love all horses.

You are accepted, but the successes must already be there.” It is similar with the riders.

"That's why there are so few good women, they also have to be hard on themselves, and that's sometimes lacking."

Steinberg has a special relationship with Mendocino not only because of the success.

"He's my favorite horse, he's been that since he was a yearling." She always rides him in training herself, after which the stallion regularly takes a brine bath in a large wooden barrel to clear his respiratory tract and relax.

"Mendocino is a very sensitive horse," she says, and that is probably the explanation for the shock moment of the year.

At the Hong Kong International Horse Races in mid-December, he stopped in the starting box for the first time in his career.

"It was just too much for him.

Now he gets a winter break and should clear his head for the coming season.”

Mendocino's spot as the stable's sporting star could be challenged next year by two-year-old Fantastic Moon.

Owned by the Liberty Racing community, the stallion won the Winter Favorite award, and that traditionally sees him wintering as the first contender for the German Derby, the race of most galloping dreams.

Steinberg trains around 30, mostly top-class horses.

Some of them belong to well-known studs such as Brümmerhof, Ebbesloh or Hachtsee.

However, the core of the RTC is the Salzburg stable of 91-year-old Wernicke.

It is unclear how things will go from there.

According to Steinberg, there is no successor plan.

The only thing that is certain is that she will not become self-employed.

But it also seems just as certain that their talent and ability will remain in the gallop sport.