The Czech Jockey Club has moved swiftly to provide races to replace the three meetings at Prague Velka Chuchle that will be lost in June, and also the meeting at Karlovy Vary.

The Derby meeting on Sunday, June 23rd has been moved to Most racecourse. The event will be organised by TMM, organisers of events at Velka Chuchle.

On Saturday, June 8th, the meetings at Pardubice and at Slusovice are expected to go ahead as scheduled. The following weekend, there will be a two-day meeting at Lysa nad Labem, instead of the originally-planned one-day meeting on the Saturday. On Friday, June 21st, some extra flat races will be added to the 'bumpers' day at Pardubice. 

Velka Chuchle always closes down for two months in the midsummer, after the Derby, so its unavailability will not be felt in the racing calendar until the end of August. It is too soon to say whether thecourse will be available then; it seems very unlikely. In any case, the Jockey Club is at present concentrating on June, and there will be plenty of other problems to deal with before the end of August.

Vaclav Luka snr, president of the Jockey Club, said that it was not possible to replace everything, but that the main consideration had been to get things up and running again. "I'd say that the present solution is the optimum one for a stable continuation of the season," he added. "We are negotiating with Karlovy Vary about rescheduling some of the races from next Sunday's [cancelled] meeting to another suitable date, so that most of the horses would not have to miss out on their planned race."

Now he and the presidium of the Jockey Club are concentrating their efforts on devising a Plan B for the rest of the Czech horseracing season and making it work as well as possible.

(interview translated from the Czech language version of the Paddock Review website)