Can it really as much as a month since I last wrote a newsletter? No, not really. The fact is that February is a short month, and I did not write the February newsletter until about the 5^th day of the month. Not much more than three weeks ago.

February has been a mild month for most of us in the Czech Republic. There has been little snow and ice here in Prague, though there were some quite rainy days. March can of course be wintry here, and plenty of snow is forecast for the first week of the month, especially on higher ground.

I am glad to report that Marek Stromský’s retirement from race riding and from horse racing as a whole lasted only a few weeks. I have read that he will be riding again this year. In this website’s Most Popular Jockey of the Year, Marek Stromský won easily in the jumps jockeys’ competition, though against strong opposition. Our new champion jockey, Jan Kratochvíl, took second place, and Josef Bartoš, who won the Italian jumps jockeys’ championship finished third. Josef Bartoš remains our best rider and a very popular and respected figure, but Stromský and Kratochvíl deserved every vote that they received.

On the flat jockeys’ side, much fewer votes were cast. Bauyrzhan Murzabayev won comfortably, but only one other rider who rides mainly in the Czech Republic was among the five nominees. Second place went to Jiřina Andrésová. Jiřina Vodehnalová, as ahe was then, retired after the 2007 season, and I understand she made her comeback mainly at the instigation of her husband, veteran jockey Dušan Andrés. She rode 9 winners in 100 races, and was a popular personality with our trainers and at our racecourses. The other three nominees for Most Popular Flat Jockey, Václav Janáček, Filip Minařík and Tomás Lukásek, all ride with distinction, but mainly abroad.

It seems to me, and I think to many others, that there are plenty of popular jumps jockeys here, but not so many popular flat jockeys. This was reflected in the much smaller number of votes in the competition for flat jockeys. Frequent overuse of the whip by several leading flat jockeys has made some of us reluctant to vote in their favour. As in other countries where effective measures have not been taken, overuse of the whip has been a growing issue here. Our stewards at the various racecourses have applied the rules inconsistently and infrequently, and all stewards have handed out light punishments when the rules have been invoked. If we convert the fines that are imposed into pounds or euros they sound ridiculously small – but this should be weighed against the small incomes that even our leading riders make.

The Jockey Club of the Czech Republic has now been accused of dragging its heels about punishing persistent horse whippers – interestingly, by people who are close to Václav Luka, snr, former president of the Jockey Club. The previous regime at the Jockey Club, it seems to me, also failed to wipe out overuse of the whip. I think it is true to say that the rules are already in place to punish this offence more appropriately, and what is mainly needed is some more effective coordination of the work of the stewards. It would also help if stewards had better videos of races available. I think it is still true that none of our racecourses has a head-on camera in the finishing straight. A head-on camera would provide much better evidence of rough riding, including use of the whip, in the key stages of the race, and surely it would not be a prohibitively expensive piece of equipment to provide nowadays.

There has again this winter been ongoing bad feeling between the organizers of racing at the racecourses and the Jockey Club, in particular Jockey Club president Jiří Charvát. They have been carrying out megaphone diplomacy again, addressing each other through declarations, bitter statements and open letters on websites, accusing each other of not negotiating. There are still no officially signed agreements between the Jockey Club and the racecourses about the 2016 racing season, though the organizers at most of our racecourses very recently posted their unofficial race conditions on www.dostihy.net. A major point of dispute is that the Jockey Club and its president want the racecourses to reduce the standard cost of entry+declaration to run from 5% to 3.5% of the prize money – however, it is noted that the unofficial race conditions published on dostihy.net retain 5%. Jiří Charvát claims that this reduction is a part of the deal under which, since last year, racecourses have paid out considerably less in owner’s prizes to the owners of Czech-bred horses that achieve something in races in Category III and higher. The racecourses do not deny that 5% is a very high percentage for owners to pay, but they say it is very hard for organizers to find income from sponsors or from other sources. If they are to remain in business, they need more income than last year, certainly not less.

Jiří Charvát allegedly suggested in February that he would pay 30 million crowns to buy Prague Velká Chuchle racecourse (and presumably then deal with troublemakers). Racecourse manager Petr Drahoš promptly pointed out that it would not be so easy to buy out the shareholders. When the racecourse was bought at the end of 2001, the shareholders ensured that the shares were held in such a way that the course would remain for horseracing and could not easily be purchased by a developer or by an undesirable person.

The mild winter has made it possible for horses to be trained all winter in many parts of the country. Josef Váňa snr has been taking some horses to run abroad, with quite good success. His best result was with Roches Cross, which won our Derby in 2011. This horse continued on the flat until the age of 6, and then took some time to adapt to hurdles. He won a very nice Graded race at Pisa in February. 8-y-o Váňa-trained Tahini won twice over hurdles in Italy, at Pisa and at Treviso, in February. Václav Luka, jnr and Igor Endaltsev, in particular, have been running horses on the flat in France, but without much success so far.

Our Czech racing season begins at Prague Velká Chuchle on Sunday, April 3rd. I am looking forward to it.