The horseracing programme for the 2017 season has been published on the website of the Jockey Club of the Czech Republic http://www.dostihyjc.cz/dostihy.php. It is of course a good sign that the programme has appeared on time this year. There has presumably been a less toxic dialogue between the Jockey Club and the racecourses than last year. However, I am not sure that the dispute over the amounts to be paid by owners to enter and declare their horses for races has been fully and amicably resolved. If they have recently been exchanging new year’s cards and resolving to love each other more in future, it would be good news.

I hope that the list of racedays is not final. There are a number of Saturdays, Sundays and public holidays available for extra meetings. There would be room for a couple more meetings in August, for example.

Most racecourse was bought last summer by a company in the Charvát Group, which is led by Jiří Charvát, president of the Jockey Club of the Czech Republic. The course will provide six racedays in 2017, more than in recent years. There will be three race meetings between mid October and mid November. This is a welcome innovation. Prague Velká Chuchle has claimed only 16 days. Sixteen racedays at Velká Chuchle would be the smallest number since flooding wiped out the second half of the season there in 2002.

Two PMU racing days have been announced, on June 9th at Prague Velká Chuchle and on July 25th at Most. These are to be Friday evening meetings run under the aegis of pari-mutuel, and there will be betting opportunities on these races wherever French pari-mutuel reaches out. I understand that there are to be five races at each of these meetings. I understand that Pari-mutuel betting will also operate on Velka Pardubicka day.

Czech Derby day at Prague Velká Chuchle returns to the fourth Sunday in June (June 26th). The 3rd European Jockeys Cup day at Prague Velká Chuchle is on Saturday, September 2nd. Czech St Leger day, run until now on the last Sunday in August, has been moved back to Sunday, October 1st, at Prague Velká Chuchle. This has presumably been done so that the horses can run on European Jockeys Cup day. The Velka Pardubicka meeting will take place over two days, with the VP itself on its traditional date, the second Sunday in October (October 8th).

Lysa-nad-Labem, a pleasant racecourse not far east of Prague, again offers only three meetings this year, and Benešov again offers none. In 2016, the first two meetings of the year at Velká Chuchle were lost due to a dispute between the Jockey Club of the Czech Republic and most of the racecourses. The number of races run here in 2016 was the lowest for many years, and the number of racedays announced so far for 2017 is only the same as the number of racedays actually implemented last year. The situation is not bad - but a few extra meetings to fill in some gaps would be very welcome.