July 2010 newsletter
In these newsletters, I normally write about enthusiasts who keep Czech racing going, against the odds, and the July newsletter, in particular, normally takes up this theme. Our ‘summer season’ is now beginning, when racing closes down at the headquarters (Prague Velka Chuchle for flat racing, and Pardubice for steeplechasing). For two months, there is racing only at the up-country courses. Most and Karlovy Vary are proper racecourses, and do not deserve to be considered provincial, but the others are kept going by local enthusiasts, and are in all cases well supported by their local communities. These are the grassroots, and they are the best aspect of Czech racing. My resolution is to get to Svetla Hora, Slusovice and Albertovec this month of July. All are in distant parts of Moravia, and all are festivals of racing.
The grassroots seem to be sprouting strongly, and all that is needed is a series of sunny afternoons this month to ensure several good days out. But what of the situation at headquarters? I have written before about the optimists who are happy that the glass is half full, and the pessimists who point out that it is half empty. Nowadays, the optimists, or should we call them the cheerleaders, are pointing out that the glass is a quarter full, while the pessimists, or are we realists, know that it is three-quarters empty. The “handful” of people who run Czech racing are whistling cheerfully in the dark. I must put “handful” in inverted commas, as the handful deny that they are a handful. They insistently denounce writers and, above all, the newly reformed trainers’ association, for daring to suggest they are a clique, rather than our dear and wise leaders.
The non-existent handful has for years formed a strong lobby for Czech breeders. They have ensured that there are substantial so-called owner’s prizes available only for Czech-bred horses, and a heavy, probably illegal surcharge for reregistering racehorses brought in from other EU countries. The argument is that breeders in other countries, especially Poland, have been dumping their overproduced foals and ruining the market for Czech breeders. The argument does have a grain of truth. There has been a major crisis in Polish racing, and breeders have had horses that they were desperate to sell. However, it needs to be understood that purchasers only fight over well-bred, fine-looking horses, and there will never be a strong market for moderately-bred racehorses, even if they do not look too bad. Unpromising yearlings will never be sold for as much as it costs the breeder to produce them – there will always be many more of them than the market wants to buy. Twenty years of protection have to some extent shielded our breeders from competition and from reality, but they have only in a few cases led to the production of top-quality Czech-bred horses. Fifteen of the 16 runners in this year’s Czech Derby were bred abroad, and the only Czech-bred runner finished 11th.
I sometimes fear that part of the charm for the non-Czech readers of this newsletter is that it reports on the obscure but colorful goings-on in the backwaters of Central European horseracing. The main event of the year is a 19th century type steeplechase with horses tumbling into a great big ditch right beneath the grandstand, and the winning jockey is a bionic 57-year-old. It is all a great curiosity, rather funny, and what might be expected way out east. Let me amuse you, therefore, with some recent exploits of our Ruritanian officials.
Our trainer’s championships have always been based on numbers of winners, and not on prize money won. Otherwise, the trainers of the Derby winner and the Velka Pardubicka would almost automatically become the champion trainer on the flat and over fences. Several weeks after the beginning of this season, a committee of the Jockey Club decided to change the rules for the Trainers’ Championships to a rather obscure points system favouring trainers with large stable and winners of higher category races. This was announced without consulting the newly reorganized association of racehorse trainers, who, of course, took offence. The association has now found a sponsor for its own championship, based on the original rules and open only to its members.
Then, less than two weeks before the Derby, a committee of the Jockey Club suddenly announced a new rule that places would be found in Czech races for a maximum of two horses trained in any foreign country. This had the immediate effect of eliminating a Slovak-trained horse from the Derby and bringing in a Czech-trained horse. Again the association of racehorse trainers was not consulted, nor was Pardubice racecourse. Several of our trainers would be sad if Slovakia or Italy were to introduce such a rule in revenge, and Pardubice would not accept the rule that only two British horses could run in the Velka Pardubicka. The ruling is both arbitrary and ill thought-out, and it was soon explained, unofficially I think, that it refers “only to flat racing, so don’t worry”.
A member of the Council of the Jockey Club wrote his Standpoint, published in the Czech-language pages of Paddock Revue, criticizing the critics. Expressing anger at imputations of dishonorable behaviour by himself and by the Jockey Club, the writer stated, “I must emphatically deny the fact that there was any ‘vigorous response, or retaliation.’ ” Emphatic denial of the facts seems to be pretty standard practice these days, not only in Czech horseracing.
I hope this foolish mess will be cleared up, and that a month from now there will be better things to write about than non-existent handfuls who deny the facts.