Did I really want to make my way to racecourses inaccessible by public transport, in extremely hot and dry weather, in order to watch only moderately interesting races? The answer in August 2013 was not always Yes, and the truth is that I have not been racing much recently.

In the second half of August, the weather cooled down, but most parts of the country still need some steady rain as the month comes to an end. A meeting at Slusovice was cancelled because the racecourse was bone dry, with big cracks on the surface, and it was not possible for two men sharing a watering can to get the track into a fit state for racing. In early August, the meeting at Lysa was run in the evening to avoid the heat of the day. This is not usual here, but it went well - perhaps evening meetings, even in midweek, would be worth trying again next summer.

September is frequently the month with the pleasantest weather of the year in the Czech Republic. The days are not too hot, but it often remains warm enough to sit outside in the evening. I hope we have not yet had the month in 2013 with the best, or with the least bad, weather of the year.

The autumn segment of our racing season usually begins at the end of August, with meetings at Pardubice and at Prague Velka Chuchle after the summer break at our two main racecourses. Well, this year Pardubice did not have a complete summer break, while the break at Velka Chuchle was extended at both ends, due to the floods in June and the measures to deal with the floods, which extended until the end of August.

The Czech St Leger meeting has been put back by a week until September 1^st. We hope the racecourse in Prague will be raceable for the whole of September and October, although the turf has had only three months to recover from being submerged at the beginning of June. Most of the course was under water for less than ten days, and is OK, but some parts were under contaminated water for longer and have needed major remediation.

With the cancellation of the main Derby trial at the beginning of June, and the dry weather in midsummer, our top 3-y-os have not been out much this year. The Derby winner, Mister Aviation, and the Oaks winner, Saltanaat, meet in the St Leger on September 1st. However, both of the 2400-metre classics were run this year at Most, where horses notoriously run differently than on the more standard course at Velka Chuchle, and, of course, the St Leger is run over a longer distance. No doubt, it will take a good horse to win the St Leger, and we will know much more about our best staying 3-y-os on Sunday afternoon than we do a couple of days before the race.

While the St Leger has merely been postponed by a week, the best-sponsored steeplechase scheduled for August had to be cancelled. The third of three races in the Josef Vana Cup series will not be run on August 31^st, because the Ministry of Agriculture failed to come up with the sponsorship that it had promised. This was one of the impacts of the collapse of the government led by Petr Necas and the way it was dealt with by president Milos Zeman. In the February 2013 newsletter, I asked myself the question: How will the presidential election affect horseracing? My answer was: “As far as I know, neither of the candidates takes any special interest in the sport, and in any case the president would not have much power to influence political decisions affecting racing.” I was wrong, yet again. President Zeman actively prevented the discredited government retaining power under new leadership. If Karel Schwarzenberg had been elected, the Ministry of Agriculture would surely have been under the same or similar leadership, and the Josef Vana Cup would presumably have got its sponsorship.

The only race meeting in August that is worth extended commentary was at Pardubice on August 24^th, when the weather was reasonably cool and the course was not terribly hard and dry. I must again congratulate the team led by Jiri Janda, which has worked hard in challenging conditions over the last 18 months to get the course back into quite good order (though the ploughed fields are still very dusty in August, and we must wait and see what they will be like when it is wet).

The late June and August meetings at Pardubice have left noone in doubt about the two best Czech-trained contenders for the Velka Pardubicka. At both of these meetings, Orphee des Blins won her race extremely impressively, and then, half an hour later, Trezor won the VP qualification race almost equally well. I agree with the official handicapper, who rates Orphee des Blins higher - after all, she destroyed Trezor at Pardubice last October. Orphee des Blins is to be ridden by Jan Faltejsek in October, and Trezor will be the mount of Josef Bartos. Although these two horses have twice shown remarkable class this year, and were also our top two crosscountry chasers in 2012, there are some other decent Czech-trained contenders.

Triple VP winner Tiumen is likely to be ridden again by Josef Vana snr. The horse seemed to underestimate the height of the English Jump on August 24^th. Vana was jolted out of the saddle and hit the ground fairly hard, but was uninjured. Some 60-year-old jockeys might have taken this as a warning, but for Vana it is more likely to be a challenge to do better next time. [I have just read that Tiumen was run into from behind at the Hangar Fence, and this is given as the explanation for his failure to put in a proper jump at the next fence, the English Fence.]

Vana seems to have only two likely contenders this year, Tiumen and Budapest. Budapest has finished 3^rd in two VP qualification races this year, and has a distinguished record over fences and hurdles in Italy. He is not to be ignored. For the Vana-trained crosscountry horses, in particular, the other 364 days in the year are strictly preparatory for the second Sunday in October, Velka Pardubicka day. It is always possible that one of his less fancied horses is being prepared as a secret weapon up in the hills near Karlovy Vary. Vana-trained Ilion has a useful record in Italy, and qualified for the VP, unimpressively, in May. 

Klaus has been beaten into 2^nd place in both his races this year, by Bremen Plan at Pardubice in May, and by Moula at Svetla Hora in July. He is capable of better than that. Bremen Plan’s win in the May qualification race was a pleasant surprise, but since then he has twice disappointed again. Wroblewski-trained Broker showed unexpected ability when he finished a good 2^nd in the August qualification race at Pardubice. Valldemoso, placed in the last two VPs, has disappointed so far this season.

Ronino, 2^nd in last year’s VP, has not yet qualified for this year’s race. Three horses -  Lingarry, Frasini and Ronino - had a loose horse run right across a fence as they were preparing to jump it in the June qualification race, and they needed a second attempt to get  over the fence. Although they were adjudged, correctly, to have completed the race, in 6^th- 8^th position, they were later adjudged not to have fulfilled the qualification conditions for the VP, because they ‘turned aside’. Undeniably, they did in some sense ‘turn aside’; on the other hand, they did all duly complete the course of the race. It is a pity that all three of these horses are still not qualified for the VP. [An article by Jaroslav Fabris on this topic on the Galopp Reporter website attracted plenty of responses. Everybody agrees that the VP qualification rule needs to be changed or clarified, and some argue that there are grounds for an appeal.]

Another horse that has not yet qualified is Age of Jape, Czech triple crown winner on the flat, and with a decent record over jumps, too.

Without doubt there are some good Irish-trained and UK-trained entries for the VP. We hope some of them will come across and, like last year, add colour to the race and take home some of the prize money for the minor places (e.g. 6^th place, 200 000 crowns; 7^th place, 150 000 crowns, i.e. EUR 8 000 and 6 000, could be conceded to them). By the way, a supplementary entry for the VP has been announced, a mare called Folie D’Ocean, trained by Patrice Quinton.

Czech horses have continued to run abroad, perhaps more than ever, and they increasingly head north and north-west to Poland and Germany in search of races that are not too far from home. Italy fails to attract some of our trainers, as they and their owners do not like to run for virtual prizemoney - I think it is true to say that Merano has not yet paid out any prize money this year. Nevertheless, I read that our trainers have won 17 races in Italy this year. The most remarkable may have been when Soros ran at Merano last Sunday. He approached the last fence in 5^th place, and then veered to the left on landing. However, he produced a remarkable turn of speed for Josef Vana jnr and got up in the last metres. The same horse had done something very similar four weeks earlier to win the Josef Vana Cup race at Pardubice, ridden on that occasion by Marek Stromsky.

In September we can look forward to racing at Prague Velka Chuchle every Sunday, beginning with St Leger day, on September 1st. The following weekend there is the renewed Wielka Wroclawska meeting at Wroclaw Partynice. Congratulations to the new management on reviving steeplechasing there and putting on races that our top trainers, and others, want to compete in. In the two main races at these meetings, more than half of the runners will be Czech-trained. Then there will be the mid-September meeting at Pardubice, featuring the last qualification race for the Velka Pardubicka. And on the following weekend, there is the autumn festival meeting at Velka Chuchle, with Category I races over Guineas distance and Derby distance, in which the top 3-y-os can compete against older horses.

I have written before on this site about the major new greyhound racing stadium that will open in the Motol district of Prague, in September. I see that the official opening is on Friday, September 13^th, and that it is by invitation only. It will feature a few greyhound races, and also races on electric-engine motorbikes and on segways, and a bouncy castle and many other entertainments for the kiddies. The stadium features a Japanese restaurant. Regular meetings will be on Saturday evenings. I get the impession that there are not yet enough racing dogs, and, at least temporarily, the entertainment will be not just on the state-of-the-art sandtrack for greyhounds, but also on the adjacent hard track for mechanized humans.

My wish for September is some good rains, falling mainly at night, together with some sunny days and some of the pleasantly warm evenings that we expect at this time of the year. Would it be too much to ask for a month of normal September weather in the heart of Europe!