Before the race

The current situation is that the race meetings scheduled for Oct. 17^th at Most, on Oct. 25^th at Prague Velká Chuchle, and on Oct. 28th at Slušovice have all been postponed.

 The race meetings at Most on Saturday, October 17^th and at Pardubice on Saturday, October 24^th have been cancelled.

12-y-o Hegnus has won the 130^th running of the Velka Pardubicka, after four horses had run side-by-side for a while after the last fence. In the end, second place went to Player, Vandual finished third, and the remaining prize-money winners were Talent, Tzigane du Berlais, Casper and Lodgian Whistle.

Hegnus is owned by František Ševců and trained by Radek Holčák, and was ridden by Slovak jockey, Lukáš Matuský.

Every year, Christopher Simpson posts his pre-race analysis of the Velka Pardubicka on his website https://www.freewebs.com/becher123/

Although Chris has not been to Pardubice for far too long, he is able to follow Czech racing via the website of the Jockey Club of the Czech Republic and via YouTube. 

He tells me that someone has now posted complete Czech Television coverage of Velka Pardubickas since 2002, but he did not give me a link.

(This press release from the organizers of events at Pardubice racecourse was issued on October 2^nd.)  

Congratulations to the organizers of European Jockeys’ Cup day. Despite the worst efforts of the virus, the meeting took place, and towards the end of the afternoon, rather surprisingly, the sun came out from behind thick clouds. French jockey Vincent Cheminaud smiled and said nice words as he accepted the trophy.

Dostihový

The raceday scheduled at Bratislava racecourse for September 19^th has been cancelled because of an abrupt change in the rules for Czechs travelling to Slovakia. The new rules state that Czechs crossing the border into Slovakia must now present a negative covid-19 test certificate not more than 72 hours old. As many Czech-trained horses were entered for the races, and in particular because 60% of the already-declared riders were Czech-based, the organizers decided that the best option was to cancel the event.