Rider dies at Brno

Rider dies at Brno

According to the Jockey Club of the Czech Republic web site, 46-year-old amateur rider Zdenek Kalab was killed in an accident in a flat race at Brno on May 1st. He was riding Riche in a Category IV race. The horse fell, landing on top of the rider, who received multiple injuries. Zdenek Kalab rode 5 winners, and had taken second place in an earlier race.

Mandarino wins the First of May Steeplechase for the 3rd time

The Category I First of May Steeplechase at Lysa-nad-Labem was won by Mandarino, which has now won the race three times and finished second once. This was not a fluid jumping performance by Mandarino, which will now be directed towards the Velka Pardubicka qualifying races, the first of which is at Pardubice on Saturday, May 22nd. Mandarino, owned by Jasna, trained by Stanislav Popleka, was ridden by Jaroslav Myska.

Rabbit on a hot streak

On May 2nd, the very ambitious Rabbit Trhovy Stepanov stable won the feature race at Prague Velka Chuchle for the thrid time in three weeks, when Pumpkin, ridden by Martin Srnec easily won the Category I May Handicap. Previous to that, Mikrop Fong and Rabbit King won the trial races for the Czech One Thousand Guineas and Two Thousand Guineas, also very easily. Rabbit will be confident of winning the One Thousand Guineas with Mikrop Fong on May 9th and the Two Thousand Guineas with Rabbit King a week later.    

Racing at Pardubice on Saturday May 8th

The first meeting of the season at Pardubice, On May 8th, has attracted fields with at least ten entries for all nine races. May 8th is Italian Day, and the first race will be at 1 pm. There are two further meetings at Pardubice in May, on Saturday 22nd (British Day), when the main event will be this first VP qualifying race, and on Saturday 29th (Russian Day).