According to the website of the Czech Jockey Club, the date for the Czech St Leger has been put back by one week, and the race is now scheduled to be run on Sunday, September 1^st. This will allow an extra week for Prague Velka Chuchle racecourse to recover from the June floods, which covered the entire racecourse, and left some bare patches where the water lay on the surface for a long time. The most worrisome stretch is the lowest-lying part of the course, between the 1800 metre mark and the 1600 metre mark, around the beginning of the back straight. Racecourse manager Petr Drahos told the Dostihovy Svet Czech language pages, “We have leveled everything out and resown it, and the flat race track is now in the hands of nature. I believe we should be able to run the St Leger one week late [i.e. September 1^st]. This is a date that could be realistic for Velka Chuchle.”

Petr Drahos also informed our Czech-language pages that harness racing should begin at Velka Chuchle on Saturday, July 28^th. Harness racing is run on an artificial surface, which can be got ready at short notice. This will be the first trotting meeting to be held this year in the Czech Republic, and it is hoped that there will now be regular Saturday trotting meetings at Prague Velka Chuchle, after a break of a year and a half, and that there will also be meetings at Slusovice, where some trotting races were held last year.