I am writing this the day after the British prime minister informed the EU that Britain will leave the union. It is of course an act of folly, and we are being led into it by a team of incompetents. Paddy Ashdown, in the Independent, put it quite succinctly 

We are now embarked on a course that will bewilder future historians as the most remarkable example in modern history of a country committing an act of monumental self-harm while still in full possession of its faculties.

In the past, the Brits were always good at ensuring that the victims of their follies were foreigners – for example the Czechs and Slovaks 80 years ago, and more recently the poor Iraqis. Shooting ourselves in the foot, shitting on our own doorstep, has not until now been considered a British trait. There will of course be a big price to pay for these stupidities – don’t believe the fake stories in the press claiming that it will probably all turn out not too badly. There is surely a disaster that will gradually unfold for the ordinary people of Britain, and maybe even some of the 1% will get dragged down too. It is a lose - lose situation, and it will be terrible for the European Union too. 

Nevertheless, I personally hope to survive it all reasonably well. The brunt will fall, as usual, mainly on younger and more vulnerable people. Let us change the subject.

***

It is not safe, on a lovely sunny spring day at the end of March, to write about the Czech winter in the past tense. Gardeners and farmers know that the Ice Saints have their feast days just before the middle of May. In the Czech tradition, the three Ice Saints are Boniface, Pancras and Servatius – wikipedia states that in other countries in central and western Europe, St Mamertus or St Sophia replace St Boniface in the list https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_Saints. A series of nights with sharp frosts just before the ides of May (i.e. May 15th) occurs quite often. However, the late frosts that did considerable harm to the Moravian wine harvest in 2016 came a bit earlier than that.

***

As far as ski resorts and racehorse trainers are concerned, however, the winter is over. The Czech ski resorts have had their best and longest season for many years. The Czech trainers have had to deal with snow and ice in the winter months, but not with much mud. This has made it possible for tough trainers like Josef Váňa, Greg Wroblewski and Štěpánka Myšková, who are not deterred by frost, snow and ice, to keep certain horses in training in the winter months. Each of them has been able to win at least two good races over fences even before the Czech season begins on April 2nd (serious steeplechasing will not begin here until Easter Monday, at Lysa-nad-Labem).  

As I write this, Josef Váňa snr has already trained 11 winners ridden by his son, plus two ridden by Jan Kratochvíl, in Italy in 2017. Greg Wroblewski has won two good races in France. Štěpánka Myšková won a nice race at Nancy with Ascover and another nice race recently at Compiégne with Capferret. Both winners were ridden by her husband, Jaroslav Myška. 

While our jumps trainers have been winning race after race, our flat horses are yet to get off the mark in 2017. Václav Luka and Zdeno Koplík have sent quite a few runners to France already. They will have been disappointed with their results so far, but the horses may have benefitted from their outings. 

In March 2017, Czech-trained horses will have run at 48 race meetings in France, Italy and Germany, and many entries have been made for races abroad in early April. Two interesting entries are at Jägersro, near Malmö in southern Sweden, on April 2nd. The horses are trained by Radim Bodlák, and are owned by Czech owners.

There has been some interesting discussion on the Czech horseracing websites about the work of the official Czech handicappers, Jaroslav Fabris and Jan Žid, who are now entering their third season in the job. They wrote 15 months ago http://www.dostihovy-svet.cz/cs/node/5937 about efforts to coordinate the handicaps for flat racing in the central European region, in collaboration with the senior German handicapper, Harald Siemen, and the handicappers in the other central European countries. This has involved making positive changes to the Czech handicapping system.

It is generally agreed that our handicappers are doing a good job, and one article that I read (which I cannot trace right now) proved that there was significantly less distance between the first horse and the second horse, and between the first horse and the fourth horse, in the handicap races at Prague Velká Chuchle in 2016 than in some earlier year. In addition, a much larger proportion of handicap races were won by half a length or less than a few years ago. I certainly had the impression last year that the bookmakers offered much more open books on most handicaps in 2016 than in previous years. Last year, I would look at the horses’ names, and at their handicaps, and instead of spotting a horse that seemed to me - often wrongly - to have a good chance, I would just admire the handicappers’ good work - and conclude that I could only bet and hope. 

There have been a few changes in the rules for this season: slightly fewer strokes of the whip are allowed, which I am pleased about; a rider can fall and remount in the Velka Pardubicka (and I think in other races too), which I think is a backward step; and the amount that owners pay to enter and declare their horses for a race has been reduced to a maximum of 4% - the old rate (5%) was of course too much, but the racecourses need the income. 

The Czech 2017 racing season begins at Prague Velká Chuchle on Sunday, April 2nd. We will see how the season turns out. The old problem remains that Czech racing has too little income, while the cost of having a horse in training is as much as the cost of sending a child to a boarding school. The number of horses in training has been falling. The overall numbers of horses in training have dropped by only a few percent, but the number of 2-y-os in training has been falling more dramatically. The argument that we should be looking at the numbers of 2-y-os, and considering the problem as serious, makes a lot of sense.

Other problems are that our best flat jockeys see better prospects abroad, and the number of strong boys weighing 48 kg entering the school for apprentices is minimal. However, the opportunities for talented girl riders continue to be good here. Most of our small trainers are at or below the poverty line. All of our racecourses could do with some investment, and some need it more or less urgently.

Czech racing receives less support from central, regional and local government than racing in other countries. This means that we are a poor community, but at least we are independent, or self-dependent, and are not too much affected by changes in the political climate. 

In other words, Czech racing enters the 2017 season, as usual, with plenty of hope, but knowing that, in reality, it will again be a struggle to keep the sport afloat.