This newsletter normally appears a few days or hours before the beginning of the month whose name it carries, but this time I was far too ill to want to write it at the relevant time. By this morning, April 10^th, I had decided that the April and May newsletters would be merged, and might appear at the end of April.

For this morning, the Jockey Club of the Czech Republic had called a press conference in the Hotel Pariz, the splendid Art Noveau hotel adjacent to the Municipal House in Prague Old Town. It was a lovely warm day, I felt not too bad, and I decided to participate.

I have already reported the main news, above. The announcement that Mercedes-Benz is to be the general partner of the Czech Jockey Club is excellent news for Czech racing, and I hope it will turn out well for Mercedes, too.

The press release issued by the Jockey Club, and the discussions in and around the press conference convinced me that there would be plenty to write about now, in an April newsletter. After all, the long-awaited beginning of a new season should be celebrated.

On April 5^th, I watched the opening day of our season on CT Sport. It was a chilly afternoon, and the main race, the Gomba Handicap, over 1200 metres, was the last of the eight races on the card. It had to be fitted into the CT Sport programme between an ice-hockey play-off game and some other event that I have already forgotten, probably a football match in the Synot Liga. In what looked like a fast-run race on softish ground, the favourite, Mikesh, carrying top weight, came from behind and won well, ridden by Jiri Chaloupka. The first race had been won by trainer Greg Wroblewski, who only very recently moved in to his new yard at Levin, near Benesov. Greg, who is now a public trainer again, has about 20 horses in training. He will doubtless get what he can out of them, but he does not appear to have anything like as much talent in his yard as he had at Zhor.

The racetrack at Prague Velka Chuchle had not had long to recover from the winter. Admittedly, it was not a hard winter, with only a short spell of cold weather, over the new year holiday. However, it froze most nights in March, and there was plenty of precipitation, much of it in the form of snow, which continued through the first week of April. The track will need some attention before the second meeting of the season. Velka Chuchle racecourse manager Petr Drahos frequently complains that it is difficult to maintain the course in reasonable condition when there is racing every Sunday in spring and autumn. The going was given as 3.3 – good, measured before the first race, but by the end of the afternoon quite big divots were flying.

At the beginning of a new season, it is good to see some people making a comeback. Pavlina Filipova took a very bad fall at Kolesa in July, and needed a series of operations. Pavlina had just graduated from the school for apprentices at Velka Chuchle, and had already ridden 34 winners. Jiri Palik has returned to the Czech Republic after riding over 700 winners, mainly in Germany. He has been away for 20 years, and spent the last 3 years as a work rider in Hongkong. However, it seems that he was attracted by the opportunity to return home and ride in races again. Jirina Andresova is to make her comeback on a well-fancied filly in the main race next Sunday. When she last rode, in 2008, she was Jirina Vodehnalova, and had already ridden 24 winners. Welcome back, Pavlina, Jiri and Jirina!

In the press conference called today by the Jockey Club of the Czech Republic, the president, Jiri Charvat, made it clear that he wants, in particular, to have more good-quality horses trained and raced here. He sees this as essential for raising the reputation of Czech racing. He also wants the Czechs to present themselves prominently in regional and international decision-making assemblies. It is good to hear that greater efforts are being made to coordinate the racing timetables in the central European region, and that our two new handicappers have been charged with coordinating Czech handicapping with handicapping elsewhere in Europe. Until now, horses have had to earn a handicap separately within each jurisdiction in Central Europe, but from this year, I understand, horses will be able get a handicap in one country and carry it to another.

For Jiri Charvat, the most important personalities in our racing are rich owners who invest in top-class horses. All owners, he points out rightly, will lose a more or less large proportion of their investment. However, it is the rich owners, who redistribute large amounts of money, support a whole horseracing industry and provide entertainment for large numbers of people.

As has been discussed in several recent editions of this newsletter, Jiri Charvat’s arguments of this kind have directly or indirectly criticized the regime of his predecessor, Vaclav Luka snr, who was president of the Czech Jockey Club for 17 years, up to 2014. Vaclav Luka saw horseracing professionals as his constituency, and wanted to support the comparatively unsuccessful majority as much as the stars. Rich owners could and should look after themselves.

Personally, I do not accept the idea that horse ownership is an act of great philanthropy. Is it really more philanthropic than owning a yacht? There are more philanthropic things that wealthy people could do with their money (Jiri Charvat’s Charvat Group does make generous charitable contributions through its sponsorship fund).

I have some doubts about whether having slightly better racehorses trained and raced here would suddenly raise the prestige of our racing. I think the way to raise the profile of Czech racing is to improve all aspects of it, little by little. And, by the way, to recognize some very good work that was introduced during the Luka era. Tomas Hora, for example, does a wonderful job with IT at Velka Chuchle. He deserves enormous credit for creating and maintaining the excellent Jockey Club website.

At the end of November 2014, an interesting article appeared on the Jockey Club website, written by Ferdinand Minarik, snr., who spent his whole working life in Czech racing, as a leading jockey and as a trainer at Velka Chuchle. His son, Filip Minarik, is the most successful Czech jockey of his generation (he is about 40), and has been a leading jockey in Germany for many years. Minarik discusses the work done at the school for apprentices at Velka Chuchle. Its graduates are very welcome all over the racing world, especially in western Europe, where many of them work permanently or over the winter. The level of riding is generally quite good nowadays, though Minarik complains that overuse of the whip is still too much tolerated. He also points out that there are fewer and fewer boys with the necessary physique for a potential flat jockey; and that very few Czechs get more than 200 rides in a season, while a top jockey in France can have as many as 1 000 rides – and nothing is more valuable than racing experience.

There are a number of Czechs riding successfully abroad, most notably Vaclav Janacek, in Spain. In recent years, with the revival of racing in Poland, Martin Srnec and Tomas Lukasek have established themselves among the very best jockeys at Warsaw. Eliska Kubinova and Lucie Herkova are respected and established jockeys in the USA.

Some of our trainers travel widely and achieve plenty of success abroad. Czech trained horses won over 35 million crowns (EUR 1.25 million) abroad in 2014. The professionalism of our trainers and jockeys is evident.           

I am happy that Jiri Charvat is setting about raising the quality of the racehorses that are trained and run in the Czech Republic, and I am glad that he is supporting active participation in regional and international horseracing organizations. However, I do not see an improvement in these two sectors as a shortcut to raising the profile of Czech racing. In each sector we should try to recognize and maintain what is good, and to improve what is not so good. Even we writers can make our small contribution.