This newsletter should have been posted a week ago, and I have no excuses for the delay. I have not been unwell, I have not been busy. I could justly claim that it has been very hot – but the very hot weather only began after I should have completed the newsletter. Yesterday, I had a choice between finishing the newsletter and watching England destroy Australia in one of the most pleasing days of cricket that any Englishman can remember. The fact is, I simply did not get round to finishing the August newsletter.

In these Newsletters, I usually comment on the weather in the Czech Republic in the previous month. For the last two winters I have commented favorably on the lack of frost, ice, snow and slush. I also appreciated the mild weather in the early part of this summer. What I have not been emphasizing is that there has been an abnormally low level of precipitation over quite a long period of time, and the ground  is now very dry.

In July 2015, we had a long period of very hot, mainly dry weather. There was some steady rain in the last week of the month, but it was all absorbed by the parched soil. The first week of August has been very hot and dry, and the weather forecast states that daily maximum temperatures in the 30s and only local storms will continue for the forseeable future. The water levels in our rivers are now very low, and the groundwater levels are very low, too. Everything is dry, and the emergency services have been busy dealing with a number of wildfires. We need rain, and we are probably not going to get it soon.

As far as I know, Czech racing has not suffered too badly from the hard ground. We expect it. The kind of mud-loving horse that might do well in Ireland should keep away from the Czech Republic. There was enough rain and enough artificial irrigation to provide good going at almost all meetings from April until the end of June. In July, there was firm going at most of the upcountry courses. In August, racing is planned for a couple of small courses (Slušovice, Netolice) where the organisers will be hoping that one of those local storms will deposit the right amount of rain in the right place at the right time.

For an urban dweller like myself, the consequences of the drought have not been serious. I have been able to buy exceptionally good and sweet Czech-grown cherries and strawberries this year. The weather seems not to have favoured peaches and apricots, though. I do not share the Czech love of water sports, and do not care that the swimming pools have been crowded. Those energetic Czechs who go skiing in winter may well go canoeing in summer. The favoured rivers for canoeing are quite small – have in mind that the rivers that run through the country have their source in the mountains that form the borders between the Czech Republic and its neighbours - Germany, Poland, Slovakia and Austria. This year there is a real danger for canoeists of running aground!

Our two most important racecourses, Pardubice and  Prague Velká Chuchle, traditionally shut down for a couple of months in midsummer, and the main races in the nine weeks between the Derby and the St Leger, on  the flat and also over fences, are held at Karlovy Vary and at Most. In Pardubice, the ground is likely to be particularly hard in July and August, and there is much to be said for not organising steeplechasing in those months.

At Prague Velká Chuchle, unusually, we had an evening meeting in mid July this year. There were plenty of runners and there was a fairly good crowd. There have been attempts in the past to put on regular midweek evening meetings at Velká Chuchle in June and July. I would welcome a renewed attempt now, as I would personally be very happy to finish work at around 5 p.m. and head off to the racecourse. However, it is very easy for us to sit in our armchairs and advise racecourse manager, Petr Drahoš, on how to make Prague Velká Chuchle thriving and prosperous. For a translation into English of a down-to-earth interview in which Petr Drahoš tells Miloslav Vlček, editor-in-chief of Fitmin&Turf Magazin, why it is not as easy as we might think, see http://www.dostihovy-svet.cz/en/node/5379.

Petr Drahoš is a very experienced racecourse manager, who has been in charge at Velká Chuchle since 2002, and was president of Dostihový Spolek, organizers of racing at Pardubice, for eight years before that. He is well aware of the need to use the racecourse facilities more extensively, and he is very aware of the constraints. Among other things, he has already twice overseen the recovery of the racecourse from catastrophic flooding, in August 2002, and from severe flooding, in June 2013.

At the risk of being too clever by half, I will put forward the arguments in favour of midsummer midweek evening meetings at Velká Chuchle. Firstly, the racecourse is very accessible to a city of 1.4 million inhabitants, in which many commuters work, and the city is visited by large numbers of tourists.

The traditional two-month summer break began in a different era. It is said that Prague empties out in midsummer, as everyone goes away and spends a month or more, or alternatively every weekend, in the family cottage in the countryside. The weekend cottage does still figure in Czech family life. Grandma and grandpa may spend the whole summer there, grow fruit and vegetables, or even have it as their main home. Czech films show Grandma emerging from her kitchen to offer delicious buchty to the grandchildren when they arrive and start runing around excitedly. However, the cottage in the countryside does not fit well with a modern lifestyle that involves frequent travel abroad, or commuting a considerable distance into town every day from suburbia. Some people see weekends and midsummers en famille in the countryside as the quintessence of Czech family life. Others, often teenagers from within the same family, see them as tedious and stressful. Some Czech families do still go to the cottage every summer weekend, but these are not people who will spend their Sunday afternoons at Velká Chuchle – though they might be able to get to the racecourse for a midsummer evening.

If some locals abandon Prague most summer weekends, the city is certainly not empty. There are a lot of tourists and working people looking for some pleasant way to spend the early part of a summer midweek evening, for example, at Velká Chuchle racecourse.  .

A problem for the racecourse management would be to find sponsors for extra meetings. It is already hard enough to find sponsors for 176 races run on 22 Sunday afternoons in spring and autumn. Would the international betting industry pay fees and provide some sponsorship for races held in early evening hours when their clients currently have “limited betting opportunities”? There has been a lot of talk over many years about the money that international betting on Czech racing could bring in. In my experience, bookmakers do not like to pay out or make a contribution. However, it might be possible to convince them that it would be worth their while investing in half a dozen Category III or IV betting opportunities at Velká Chuchle.

Although our leading courses have not been putting on major races, there been opportunities for enterprising trainers. Josef Váňa snr. is always enterprising, and he has been enjoying a good run. His Touch of Genius won both the Czech Derby, in June, and the Slovak Derby, in July – only the fourth time that a horse has won both of these races. His Budapest won the Velká Mostecká Steeplechase at Most on July 18th.

The meeting at Světlá Hora was held on July 11th. Josef Váňa is from Moravia, and he worked for several years at Světlá Hora in the 1980s. He always takes horses to run at Světlá Hora and at all the other remote courses. He ran Rabbit Well in the main race, and the horse behaved fine and won comfortably from a strong field of Moravian-trained chasers. Váňa trained three winners in the afternoon, all ridden by Josef Váňa jnr. However, a good afternoon ended unpleasantly with Josef jnr having a fall and breaking an ankle.

Mimoň, which last held a meeting in 2012, put on two days of racing in July 2015. I understand that Mimoň-based trainer Filip Neuberg coordinated the preparations, but there will have been plenty of people contributing their efforts and their money. At each of these meetings, trainer Tomáš Hurt trained three winners. In fact, two of his horses won at both of the meetings. Although the winner’s prize money for these six races totalled well below CzK 100 000 (€ 4 000), there will have been big celebrations. We are often told that it is all about money these days, but, really, it isn’t.

Tomáš Hurt is one of the people deeply involved in racing at Benešov, where he trains. Unfortunately, the meeting arranged there for August 9th has been cancelled. There was some suggestion that it could be rearranged for a later date, but no announcement has yet been made.

Our jumps jockeys’ championship has a new look this year. The last time that our champion jockey was not Jaroslav Myška, Josef Bartoš or Josef Váňa jnr. was in 2002, when Tomáš Hurt was the champion. Josef Bartoš is currently in second position, and could of course win the championship again this year. However, he is giving his main attention to retaining his Italian jumps jockeys’ championship. Josef Váňa jnr’s absence has given an opportunity to his father’s second jockey, Jan Kratochvíl. Jan has been taking full advantage. He is currently 4 wins ahead of Bartoš. In third place is Jakub Spáčil. This very promising apprentice, based at Čestmír Olehla’s stable at Světlá Hora, has already ridden 19 winners this year, over fences and on the flat, in the Czech Republic and Slovakia. (I still base my jockeys’ championships on numbers of winning rides, though the official championship nowadays is based on points, with considerable numbers of bonus points for wins in high-category races). According to the official classification, Marcel Novák is in third place, and Jakub Spáčil is further back. Marcel Novák is one of our hardworking jumps jockeys, and his name is also worth an honorable mention here.

Finally, an article on the Galopp Reporter website has announces that trainer Václav Luka junior has decided to concentrate on training horses for flat racing only, and to transfer his jumps horses to Stanislav Popelka. Václav Luka was one of our leading jumps jockeys, who retired after the 2007 season, but as a trainer he has been more successful on the flat. He has one of the best-equipped training centres for flat racing in the Czech Republic, and he will still have 45 flat horses in training. Such a successful trainer with such good conditions for training can probably well afford to specialize in this way.

Almost all of our trainers take horses both for the flat and for jumps, either because they want to,  or mainly because they cannot afford to lose the training fee for a horse when it switches from flat to jumps. Notable exceptions are leading flat trainers Arsanglirej Šavujev and Tomáš Šatra, who only train for flat racing. Václav Luka is a successful trainer with modern ideas and equipment, and can probably continue to fill his yard with flat horses. His decision to specialize seems to make good sense.   

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It has been pointed out to me, quite rightly, that I failed to mention here two particularly fine performances by Czech-trained horses in July. Any place gained in a black-type race abroad is a triumph for our horses and their connections.

Irish-bred Mikesh, by Majestic Missile, finished third in the Hoppegartener Sprint-Cup at Berlin Hoppegarten on July 19^th.  This very inexpensively-purchased 6-y-o was our top sprinter in 2014. He is owned by a syndicate that includes racing writer, race reader, announcer, and television presenter Martin Cáp (who correctly reminded me that I should have mentioned his horse!) This is the second time that Mikesh has been placed in a black-type race at Hoppegarten.

On July 26, at Maisons Laffitte, French-bred Trip to Rhodos, was beaten by just a short head in the Prix du Carrousel, over 3 100 metres. Trip to Rhodos is owned by Jiří Charvát, and is trained by Pavel Tůma. He was purchased with the assistance of the Chris Richner Bloodstock Agency.