Robin Healey´s July Newsletter

The Czech racing season falls rather neatly into three parts, or four, if you include the off-season. As it happens, the beginnings and ends of these parts fall at the beginnings and ends of certain months. As we move from June to July, Spring ends and Summer begins. In Spring, from April until June, most of the flat racing takes place at Velka Chuchle, where the capacious grandstand offers shelter from the elements. Steeplechasing Spring lasts just two months, from the Mayday meeting at Lysa-nad-Labem until the end of June. Pardubice holds five meetings in May and June, and on a wet or chilly day there is enough shelter for a medium-size crowd.

The central courses, Velka Chuchle and Pardubice, close down for eight weeks in Summer. In most years, the ground at Pardubice is rock hard in the summer months, and the break is quite appropriate. At Velka Chuchle the break is traditional. Horses trained at the course in Prague used to be taken by train to Karlovy Vary and left there for the summer meetings. In the good old days, the people who mattered would leave Prague for the summer and go for a month or six weeks in the country. I asked Velka Chuchle racecourse director Petr Drahos whether it might not be a good idea in the present, less leisurely era to try putting on some races in the capital city in July and August. He was not very interested, explaining that people are used to the present arrangement; the going in summer would tend to be very firm; some time is needed to work on the course as there is a limit to what can be done with meetings at seven-day intervals in Spring and Autumn; and he is not sure he can find sponsors for more meetings than he already has. What about trying a two-day meeting in summer, I asked. He was concerned about the turf holding out for 16 races over two days, and pointed out that the course is rather narrow, and it is therefore not really satisfactory to put in a false barrier to protect the turf near to the rail.

July and August are likely to continue to be ceded to the smaller courses, though Most and Karlovy Vary are by no means minor venues. Most puts on the Czech Oaks and the Velka Mostecka Steeplechase in the summer months, and Karlovy Vary is good and civilized for both horses and spectators. The other courses are bucolic, with plenty of charm and limited comfort. In some places, the jockeys change in a tent and the horses spend the afternoon in the boxes that transported them to the course, or are just walked up and down. This is real horse racing, of course.

Rather before the end of August, Pardubice has its first Autumn meeting. With the Velka Pardubicka just 6 or 7 weeks away, it is time for last minute qualifying or for serious warm-up races. Velka Chuchle begins the autumn with the Czech St Leger. This year Age of Jape seems to stand a very good chance of getting the triple crown. He won the Derby very convincingly, and may stay the extra 400 metres well enough.

Autumn continues until the end of October, and then the season is over. The Winter off-season lasts five long months, which is long enough for our jockeys to go to England, Ireland or France as work riders, or even, like our champion flat rider, Vaclav Janacek, to go White Racing on snow in Switzerland. Indeed, plenty of trainers cannot afford to keep their full staff on in Winter, and are relieved when the adventurous ones head west.

I have been thinking for some time that I would write in one of these monthly newsletters about our monopoly bookmaker, but who is interested in a litany of complaints? The monopoly bookmaker says that we are lucky to have him sacrificing his weekends for us mugs, and who can argue with that!

I had also thought I might write about the apparent upturn in Polish racing, which has more meetings this year than for several past seasons. Thanks to the fact that racing is being organized by the monopoly totalisator! The Polish Derby is on Sunday, July 5th. I am pleased to see that there are two Czech-trained entries, one trained by Zdeno Koplik, who took Tullamore to Warsaw for the Derby last year, and one trained here by Polish trainer, Greg Wroblewski.

As we move from Spring into Summer, we should count our blessings. The spring racing season at Velka Chuchle was favoured by a series of sunny Sunday afternoons at the end of weeks in which enough rain had fallen to ensure good going and the best turf that we have had since the terrible floods in August 2002. However, in the last week of June there have been repeated heavy thunderstorms in parts of the country, with several small and medium-size rivers bursting their banks, mainly but not exclusively in Moravia/Silesia and in south Bohemia. The weather forecast and a glance out of the window suggest that there are more thunderstorms around, and we can only hope they do not strike the most vulnerable places and add to the wretchedness.

Racing in the Czech Republic has not been much impacted by the general financial situation. It is anticipated that the racing season will continue in accordance with the published calendar, and that the number of races run and the level of prize money offered will be on a par with recent seasons. This is above all thanks to the preparedness of racehorse owners to reach even deeper into their pockets than usual this year.

As far as the Summer season is concerned, I am as usual full of good intentions to get to Svetla Hora on Saturday, July 11th, and to Albertovec on Saturday, July 25th. Both are some way from my Prague base, but are accessible by train. There are also Derbys, Oakses and St Legers throughout the Central European region to look forward to. These may not be real black-type group races, but they generate a lot of local and regional excitement and throw up good winners from time to time.