The Council of the Czech Jockey Club has announced that Ronino, Lingarry and Frasini have not yet qualified for the 2013 Velka Pardubicka.
A loose horse cut across these three backmarkers right in front of the sixth fence in the June qualification race. They only took the fence at the second attempt (which is against our rules), and then all three completed the course. However, they are now deemed to have ‘turned aside’ at the sixth fence, and not to have met the qualification requirements.

The race meeting planned for Slusovice in August will not be held, due to the extreme weather in recent days. The heatwave has put Slusovice racecourse more of less out of action, and the organisers have called the August meeting off. For the moment, the racing calendar has been slimmed down, but it does seem that the most reasonable decision has been made.

Dostihovy Svet (and the other horse-racing websites) are full of interesting interviews these days. Kateřina Jupová recently interviewed Pavel Slozil for the Dostihovy Svet Czech language pages. Pavel has been a major personality in Czech racing for a long time.

The decision to start racing at 8 a.m. at Pardubice last Sunday was widely considered to be correct. Now, with the hot weather continuing, it has been announced that Saturday's 7-race meeting at Lysa-nad-Labem will begin at 6 p.m. However, Sunday's meeting at Karlovy Vary will have the first race at the normal time, 2.30 p.m.

There have been big thunderstorms over much of the country at the beginning of the week, and it is likely that there will be good going at the weekend meetings.