After being unseated from Tiumen at the last fence in the 2013 Velka Pardubicka, Josef Vana walked westwards, in the direction of the sunset which would soon begin, down the whole of the finishing straight. He was applauded all the way, and large numbers of photographers recorded him walking sadly across the finishing line. Vana, just a few days short of his 61st birthday, then announced his retirement as a jockey. He has done this so often in the past that we think of it as an autumnal thing, and when spring flows through his veins again, the old desire to spend the summer preparing hard for the Velka has, until now, kept returning.

It could be for real this time. After all, two light falls in his last two races could serve as a warning that it is a young man's sport. It would not be a bad time to stop. Vana is the biggest and best established racehorse trainer in the country, and is a highly-respected and wise personality, in the racing community and in the Czech nation as a whole. Most parents set Josef Vana up as a role model for their male offspring, especially if they want them to show Czech fortitude, and stop weeping over some minor injury.      

Josef Vana as a trainer and as a horseracing personality will, we hope, have many distinguished years ahead of him. His era as a jockey has been utterly remarkable. Steeplechasing has no greater personailty. It has been a privilege to watch him ... and if this turns out to be yet another false alarm, and if he decides to have just one more season, so much the better!