The races for top category 2-y-os this coming weekend have revealed a lack of contenders.  In the Czech Republic, promising juvenile thoroughbreds can race in the Winter Queen Stakes for fillies at Karlovy Vary and in the Gerscha Memorial in Prague, while at Bratislava on Sunday they have their local versions of the Winter Queen and Winter Favourite races. If you are the owner of a promising 2-y-o, your heart should be dancing at the chance to assert your claims.

However, it seems that the great majority of owners in the Czech lands do not have any promising two-year-olds. The lists of runners in both of the races in the Czech Republic arouse no passion, and the Gerscha Memorial at Prague Velka Chuchle borders on a fiasco. Admittedly, there is nothing wrong with the three colts trained by Arslangirej Šavujev, but the fact that there will be only two other contestants gives little to cheer about. If anything, a look at the list of runners and the number of runners just leaves us wringing our hands.

The clash of dates in the Czech Republic and Slovakia is no doubt an unhappy starting point, but few will have anticipated this outcome. It seems to confirm what earlier races for juveniles have indicated – that there are “no horses” among the 2-y-os. That is to say, none that we might already now be watching with admiration with a view to next  year’s Czech Derby.

This is not to be wondered at, however, since recent winners of the Czech Derby have come from the ranks of horses that did not spend their two-year-old season in the Czech Republic, and having a horse trained here seems not to be the right way to go about winning classic races.

However, not all horses in their year can win a Derby, and the absence of participants in the Gerscha Memorial remains not fully explained. So again I ask, Where are the two-year-olds?

Written by our editor-in-chief, Petr Guth, and translated from our Czech language pages.