First of all, a happy new year, good health and good luck in 2016 to everyone.

A month ago, I wrote that we could have had racing on each weekend in November, though our season had finished on November 8^th. I did not at that time expect to be able to report now that racing would also have been perfectly possible on every weekend in December. December 2015 was an exceptionally mild month, without snow, and almost without frost, though there was quite a lot of much-needed gentle rain in the first three weeks of the month. Our first more or less cold night of the winter was on new year’s eve.  

A few of our trainers have sent horses abroad to run in December. Josef Váňa sent a number of horses to Grosseto, in Italy, for the last two meetings of the year. Pavel Tůma capped a good season by winning the last major race of the season at Grosseto, in Italy, the Gran Corsa di Siepi di Grosseto, with Khalshani. The horse was winning his 5th race of the season, four of them major races. This time, he was ridden by Dušan Andrés. Trainers René Vinklárek, Greg Wroblewski and Filip Neuberg took horses to run at Bremen, early in December, but without much success.

Trainer Václav Luka sent out a total of 11 runners on five different days in December at Deauville, and picked up two nice wins (on the flat) with LERAM-owned 4-y-os, Sinbad and Ventaron. LERAM, a Brno-based distributor of pharmaceuticals, was the main backer of the European Jockeys Cup meeting at Prague in September 2015, and is rapidly becoming established as a force in Czech racing.

I hope you have enjoyed reading the interviews with Czech jockeys that I have translated recently and put up on this site. Several jockeys have done well this year. Josef Bartoš won the Italian jumps jockeys’ championship for the second year in succession. He avoided major injury this year, for the first time in several seasons, and won the Italian championship very easily. As first rider for trainer Paolo Favero, he ‘only’ has to stay fit to win the championship, but his total of 50 winners in the calendar year is impressive.

Josef Váňa, jnr., as his father’s first jockey, was also favoured to win the Czech jumps jockeys’ championship, but he had a series of injuries. This allowed stable 2^nd jockey, Jan Kratochvíl, to win the championship for the first time, in spite of suffering a broken thigh in August, which kept him out of the Velka Pardubicka. Jan Kratochvíl’s  was a very popular win, celebrated by all those that he beat, including Josef Váňa, in a recent interview on this site.

On the flat, Kazakh-born Bauyrzhan Murzabayev won our flat jockeys’ championship again. What is to stop him? He is the best rider, so he gets the best horses. In addition, his riding weight is 3 kg less than his rivals. I have translated an interview with him, and am awaiting the author’s permission to publish it on this website.

Václav Janáček won the Spanish jockeys’ championship again this year, but spent many uncertain months waiting for a dispute to end and racing in Spain to begin. He made several visits to the Czech Republic, Switzerland and Poland, but by the last part of the season he was back in Spain riding winner after winner again, and running away with the championship.

Last but not least, Tomáš Lukásek won the Polish flat jockeys’ championship this year. Flat racing at the splendid racecourse in Warsaw is flourishing nowadays (as is jumps racing at Wroclaw).

You may be interested in the results of the votes in Dostihový svět, Czech language pages, for our most popular flat and jumps jockeys. The voting is still open. On the flat, champion jockey Bauyrzhan Murzabayev is leading from Jiřina Andrésová, and the next three are Czech flat jockeys riding abroad. Over jumps, the leader is Jan Kratochvíl, our new champion jockey, from Marek Stromský, who is presumably going to have victory in the Velka Pardubicka snatched away from him yet again, and Josef Bartoš. Significantly, there have been more than twice as many votes cast for popular jumps jockeys as there have been for popular flat jockeys. Too many of our flat jockeys, it seems to me, are unsmiling overusers of the whip, and I am one who has found it easy to find plenty of likeable jumps jockeys, and, alas, only Bauyrzhan and Janáček on the list of flat riders.   

No news yet about the B samples for the horses whose A samples from the Velka Pardubicka meeting tested positive for caffeine and theobromine. It is a very sad affair. Presumably, the results for the A sample will be confirmed. The trainers will be automatically punished and the owner of the first past the post will automatically lose the prize money. Of course, strict rules on doping are necessary, and doping undermines racing and is unacceptable. But when this business is over, will it mean that justice has been done?

During the Czech horseracing season, we regulars meet very frequently at the various racecourses. Then suddenly the season comes to an end, and familiar faces disappear from view for a period of five months. My only recent meeting with someone I usually meet at the racecourse, was when a familiar Scottish voice on the down escalator at Můstek metro station in Prague caught me reading a book as I passed him on the up escalator – on my way to a sports bar to watch yet another Arsenal triumph in the Premier League.

At the end of January, there will be two opportunities for us all to get together. There is a gala evening at the Národní dům na Vinohradech in Prague on January 30th, http://www.dostihy.cz/xxi-galavecer-ceskeho-turfu/. Tickets are on sale. A week earlier, there will be an Evening for Friends of Horseracing at the Národní dům in Prostějov, on January 23rd. See http://www.dostihyslusovice.cz/prostejov-2016/informace/ for details and reservations. Tickets are on sale, and very reasonably-priced  rooms at the Prostějov tennis club.

These will both set out as quite formal ball events, at which formal dress is required. Nevertheless, they will morph into very relaxed formal events. Ballroom dances for the older folk and prize ceremonies for winners will quite soon give way to the forms of entertainment preferred by the younger people.

It is time to put my e-mail address up on the website again, and to welcome contact from anyone interested in the kinds of things that I write about: Czech and central European horseracing, especially steeplechasing, and anything connected with it. Have a good year in 2016. Robin.Arthur.Healey@cvut.cz