January 2020 was a month without snow here in Prague. Maybe you will tell me that a few flakes fell in the middle of the night, somewhere in the middle of the month, but they did not settle, and I did not see any traces of them when I went out in the morning. There was quite frequent moderate rainfall, but little ice formation. Very little grit seems to have been used on the streets of Prague, maybe none at all so far this winter.

Václav Janáček (photo) has won his sixth champion jockeyʼs title in Spain, after missing out last year. Before going to Spain, Janáček dominated the Czech championship. He was our flat jockeysʼ champion from 2006 until 2010. In 2009, he rode 84 winners here, smashing the previous record, which had been 48 winners. The following year, he also rode 84 winners, winning both the Czech championship and the Slovak championship.

From today (December 16^th), a fine open-air skating rink will be available to the public at Pardubice racecourse. Horseracing fans will be pleased to hear that the skating rink is located behind the paddock, and not on the finishing straight, where it was very controversially set up last winter.

http://zavodistepardubice.cz/zimni-sportovni-park-2019

Czech-trained Subway Dancer’s name is on the list of entries for the Hong Kong Vase, one of the races at the international meeting in Hong Kong in December. Trainer Zdeno Koplík’s horse, which won a Group 2 race in France last Sunday, figures among the 72 entries, sixty of which are from outside Hong Kong. The 2400-metre Hong Kong Vase will be run on December 8^th.

Subway Dancer achieved the best performance by a Czech-trained horse last year when he finished 3^rd in the Champion Stakes at Ascot. This year, exactly a year later, Subway Dancer was sent to Longchamp, where he won the Group 2 Prix du Conseil de Paris, over 2 200 metres.

Diane Hill and James Fry again sponsored the Best Turned Out Horses competition on Velka Pardubicka day this year. Diane was the judge, and she would like everyone to know her opinion: It was really good this year, difficult at times to make decisions!!

Miloslav Vl

Sunday 13.10.2019

Each year, Chris Simpson posts his pre-race analysis of the runners and riders in the Velka Pardubicka on his website. As usual, this is  a very well informed analysis. In particular, he provides some useful information about British-trained Rathlin Rose, and about the form in France of numerous runners in the race that have run most of their races there. They were only more or less recently brought to be trained here in the Czech Republic.