This interview was taken by our editor-in-chief, Petr Guth, and first appeared in our Czech language pages. Photo of Jan Faltejsek by Petr Guth.

On Sunday Jan Faltejsek recorded his seventh win in the Velka Pardubicka, but this was the first joint win.  After  the race there were heated debates about photo finish cameras and the about lack of  a finishing line photograph but they nothing to the result confirmed by the judges commission.  How does Jan Faltejsek look back on this year’s Velka after a few days have passed?

“My feelings are the same as they were on Sunday,” says the jockey, who is almost certain after the meeting at Pardubice to win the Czech jumps jockeys’ title for the fourth time in the last five years “I was able to get my head around things at the time, and I know what went badly and what was not completely successful, and now I can distance myself from it calmly. What happened is behind us, and I do not much want to go back over it,“ he adds.

Overall, Jan Faltejsek has positive feelings after the Velka Pardubicka.  ”I’m pleased mainly because all afternoon the horses finished without injuries, and that is always the main thing. We riders may have taken some painful knocks, but that is just what happens in steeplechasing. So for me, at least, it was a good afternoon.“

The high point of the afternoon for Jan Faltejsek was of course his seventh win overall, and his fourth in the colours of  Pegas.  What impressions has he carried away from his victory with Godfrey,  a horse that he  was riding for the first time on Sunday? “I’ve only ridden him once, so I can’t make any big judgements, but he seems to me to be a horse with a terrific amount of quality in him. At the same time, though, he has a problem with jumping. I’d say that’s what could hold back his further progress, because apart from that he could have higher ambitions beyond just crosscountry races at Pardubice. However, he seemed to me like a horse that takes too much care of himself. You know, it’s a good thing when a horse jumps carefully, but in his case there was too much carefulness!“

But in spite of his carefulness Godfrey managed to get a dead heat. Among much speculation about the result, there has been plenty of discussion about the Irish horse,    Coko Beach, and what might have happened if his race had not come to an end at Havel’s Fence.  “Coko put in a very good performance. What he did was terrific, and where he was lying in the race was very good. However, the question remains what would have happened if he‘d got round and if there hadn’t been that mistake at Havel’s Fence. The fact is quite simply that he did make the mistake at  Havel’s. Why did it happen? Inexperience seems to have played a part, and in addition it happened in a phase when we were six kilometres into the race, after the last of the ploughed fields, and it’s a  hard fence to jump. After landing, the horse’s legs splayed, and the question is whether the cause was tiredness or inexperience. We’ll never know. But until that point he’d put up a fine performance. It was the  first time he’d failed to get round, but it  is almost a thousand metres from Havel’s to the finishing line, so no-one can say for sure that would have he would have smashed us. Nevertheless, if he comes back next year we’ll have to treat him with great respect,” Jan Faltejsek admits.