Most years, there are clear signs by the end of October that winter is coming to the Czech Republic, and that the horseracing season is over. Not this year. We have had a series of warm and pleasant Saturday and Sunday racedays throughout October, though admittedly it has been getting dark and cooling down much earlier in the day than in early autumn. Velka Pardubicka day was the warmest and sunniest in my memory, and it attracted a capacity crowd to the course. I heard from a fairly authoritative source an attendance number of over 31 000, and it was certainly a day of traffic jams and limited personal space. The last two Sunday afternoons at Prague Velka Chuchle also attracted big crowds of people enjoying a late October afternoon in the open air. The meeting at Slušovice on October 28^th, which I enjoyed watching on television, was also held on a bright, sunny afternoon in front of a big crowd.

All that is now left of the 2014 season in the Czech Republic is the modest meeting at Kolesa, which will be held on Saturday, November 8^th (after a blank weekend at the beginning of November). The weather forecast for the next nine days is for daily maxima of about 9°C. There is a need to provide a stimulus for our racecourses with covered facilities (Pardubice, Prague Velka Chuchle, and perhaps Most and Karlovy Vary), to put on meetings in November. The courses are understandably worried about finding sponsors for the races, about losing money if a meeting has to be cancelled or postponed, or about having only a small crowd on a wet or chilly day. However, the potential downside for the racecourse is not enormous, and it might be possible to set up a small fund to cover any deficit. Dresden, which is well north of Prague and has a similar climate, has a race meeting on November 19^th - I presume it is the betting industry in Germany that makes it worthwhile to race there at that time of the year.

Our trainers will presumably send a limited number of horses to run abroad in November, and through the winter. It will have been noted that Simply Ozzy, winner of our Two Thousand Guineas on May 11th, had run at Chantilly in January and in February, and at Longchamp in April, though with little success. Our Guineas races come very early in the Czech season, and there may be some link between Simply Ozzy’s success in the race and his series of preparatory races. His trainer, Václav Luka, jnr.,who has an all-weather track to prepare his horses on, will be planning to take horses to France early next year. Other trainers will want to do so, though only a few have the all-weather facilities that will be necessary if we have a normal hard Czech winter.

In October, as is usual these days, plenty of Czech horses ran abroad. Thanks to the European Union’s measures, there is now a single EU space for equine sport, with no delays at borders and clear and effective EU-wide rules on horse health and identification documentation. Our horses ran in France (Nancy, Deauville, Strasbourg, Longchamp, St. Galmier, Maisons Laffitte, St Cloud, Auteuil and Lyon-Parilly), in Germany (Dresden, Frankfurt), Italy (Milano, Merano), Poland (Wroclaw, Warsaw), Slovakia (Bratislava), and Austria (Ebreichsdorf). The biggest Czech success in October was when Brog Deas, the “new Royal Mougins”, won the Gran Corsa Siepi, Gd 1, EUR 60 000, at Milano on October 18th.

A frequent topic for discussion in Czech racing is whether we need foreign horses to run in our races. It is generally agreed that our runners abroad bestow a considerable benefit on the courses at which they run, but it is also often suggested that foreign horses running here only take the bread out of the mouths of our trainers. Unfortunately, this year, the ludicrous demands of trainer Charlie Mann in return for bringing the unprepared Lambro over from the UK for the Velka Pardubicka gave ammunition to the xenophobic element. It all took place in the period leading up to local and regional elections, held on October 11th and 12th, in which local pride and other populist parties did rather well. Anti-foreigner sentiment is sadly having a strong spell in the media and at the ballot box, everywhere.

As long as we have Josef Váňa and warm sunnyafternoons in October, it is undeniable - we do not need foreign horses in the Velka, certainly not poor Lambro, which blundered round bravely, finishing tailed off in 17th and last place.

Nevertheless, it must be emphasized that the only good and sustainable relationship is mutual advantage. If our horses are to run abroad, we need to provide a warm welcome for incoming horses and their connections, or some other advantage for the horseracing administrations where our horses run. Unfortunately, our prize money is not adequate to attract owners, except from adjacent countries, to race their horses here. A few may consider coming for the Velka Pardubicka, which is run for CzK 4 500 000, and the prizemoney for our Derby makes it a race for German owners and trainers to have in mind. Czech racing is, unfortunately, a poor cousin, and we should remember that poor cousins are only welcome when they provide something positive. Like, for example, our top jumps jockeys and jumps trainers, whose good skills, hard work, reliability and other traits are surely widely appreciated and admired abroad, especially in Italy.

Talking of our jumps jockeys, Josef Bartoš was knocked out and suffered a bad injury to his nose when Zulejka had a very bad fall at the Taxis in the Velka Pardubicka. A week later, however, he was at the racecourse looking OK, except for a swollen nose with a neat patch on it, and he was saying that he was impatient to get back and ride in Italy. He is second jockey for top jumps trainer Paolo Favero, and with number one jockey Raffaele Romano out injured, Bartoš has a good chance of winning the Italian jumps jockeys championship.

Jan Faltejsek, who won the Velka Pardubicka for the third successive year on Orphée des Blins, went on to have an interesting week as an international jumps jockey. The Friday after the Velka, he rode Knockara Beau at Cheltenham in the Pertemps Handicap Hurdle qualifier, unplaced, and the following day he was in Milan, where he rode Brog Deas to victory in the Graded 1 hurdles race. Jan is planning to spend the winter in Guillaume Macaire’s yard, south of La Rochelle, near the French Atlantic coast. All the hard work that he had done suddenly began to pay off two years ago, and he is now established as a top international jumps jockey.

Josef Váňa, jnr. has spent the summer basically in the Czech Republic as his father’s stable jockey, with frequent outings to ride mainly his father’s horses, abroad. He is already sure to win the Czech jumps jockeys championship, though his biggest triumph of the season was to win the Gran Premio at Merano for the second year in succession, on Alpha One, trained by his father for Italian owners, Staj Evi. Alpha One is still only 7 years old. He has never run in the Czech Republic - unfortunately, we do not offer a race that would be attractive for him.

Although our top jumps jockeys continue to be Bartoš, Myska, Váňa jnr and Faltejsek - by no means necessarily still in that order - a number of new riders have broken through this year. Lukáš Matuský began to make his mark at home in Slovakia a few years ago, but has only established himself Pardubice in the last year or so. With one meeting left, he is in 3rd place in our championship.  Michal Kubík, who I think is no longer working for Josef Váňa, snr., is in 4th place, and has had a good season. Jan Kratochvíl is in 6th place. I think he is still working for Josef Váňa, snr., though none of his three winners at the recent final meeting of the season at Pardubice was for the Váňa yard. Jakub Kocman, who spent at least one winter in Northumberland, and now works at Kolesa, is in 7th place. All these comparatively young riders have had by far their best season so far, and their progress is very welcome. Nevertheless, we need a dozen more good young jumps riders to emerge as soon as possible.

Where will they come from? Well-established flat jockeys Zuzana Vokalková and Petr Foret both rode once over hurdles this year, and both finished 2nd. Former champion flat jockey Jan Rája, who used to ride quite a lot over jumps, twice rode Playmona, his favourite from the Vocásková yard where he works, winning once and then finishing 2nd over hurdles. It does not really seem likely that any of these is about to exchange the semi-starvation of being a flat jockey for the frequent knocks that jumps jockeys suffer from.

Two older jumps jockeys also deserve an honorable mention. Veteran jockey Marek Stromský is in 2nd place in the championship, and has been riding as well as ever. He will always be the jockey who did not win the VP on Amant Gris. Martin Liška, who has been riding races since 1993, had never ridden more than 4 winners in a season until this year. In 2014, he has won 10 races in the Czech Republic (including a bumper), and 3 at Wroclaw. He has been riding with skill and confidence that has been a revelation.   

On the flat, Bauyrzhan Murzabayev has again won the championship. He won it last year with the benefit of riders’ allowances. This Kazakh-born jockey is spoken highly of by everyone who matters. He is only 23 or 24, and has done extremely well since he came here in 2012. Jiří Chaloupka has dropped down to 4th position in the championship, after leading for the first half of the season, but he has won quite a lot more prizemoney than any of the others. His winning rides on Cheeky Chappie in both the Derby and the St Leger, when he twice came from last to first in the finishing straight and won in the last stride, will be remembered for a long time.

Two Czech flat jockeys are established as top riders abroad. Václav Janáček is place to win the Spanish jockeys championship for the second time, and Filip Minařík continues to be a top jockey in Germany, despite some health problems. Eliška Kubinová, who graduated from the apprentice school at Prague Velka Chuchle but has never ridden a winner here, has established herself as a very successful rider in Oregon State http://portlandtribune.com/pt/12-sports/209837-65190-young-jockey-rides-her-american-dream . I read somewhere that she is taking time out to have a baby.

November is coming, and it is necessary to stop now and hold back some material for the winter months, which are usually quite slow in Czech racing. I hope this winter will not bring as much near-crisis as in recent years - over betting tax, racecourse closures, racecourse management, the racing calendar, and leadership of the Jockey Club - and that there will not be any new threats. Basically, I would say, Czech racing continues to be poor but reasonably healthy as the end of the 2014 season rapidly approaches.