All over the Czech Republic, February is meant to be a cold month, and there should be plenty of snow cover in the mountains for the winter sports that the Czechs are so passionate about. 2014 has been a major disappointment for hardy skiers and snowboarders, and a joy for people like me. We watched the Sochi Winter Olympics in springlike weather. The Czechs picked up a very satisfactory number of medals, but in the most followed winter sport of all, ice-hockey, the Czechs did not achieve much this time. The Czech boys (strictly speaking, the Czechs had the oldest squad in the tournament) narrowly avoided a national disaster by holding on to beat Slovakia 4 - 3, and qualify, at least, for the last eight.

Many racehorse trainers have been happy to be able to prepare their horses on good ground and in mild temperatures, but Trezor’s trainer, Hana Kabelkova, complained that she likes to train her chasers and toughen them up on winter snow. Trezor, by the way, is said to be fit again after getting injured in the Velka Pardubice, and the plan is to run him at least once in France. The only Czech horses to have raced this month were the four that Vaclav Luka jnr sent to run on the sand track at Chantilly. So Easy won for him, and Iraklin finished second, so this was a very pleasing outing.

Some good news has recently come from Italy, too. Josef Vana jnr has now received some of the considerable amount of riding fees owing to him, and I think his father has also had some payments into his account. Our trainers and jockeys have been waiting up to almost two years for their winnings. They cannot afford to wait so long - and even if they can afford it, they have a strong preference for getting paid without delay. Josef Vana jnr rode a couple of winners for top Italian jumps trainer Paolo Favero this week, so it has been a good few days for him.

There has been some news in press releases from Pardubice racecourse this month. First, Dostihovy Spolek announced that the flat race meeting that is usually held the day before the Velka Pardubice, i.e. on the Saturday, will in 2014 be held on the Friday (October 10^th). The sale of racehorses, nowadays an established tradition, will be held on Saturday, October 11^th. The new arrangement will give Dostihovy Spolek more time to prepare the facilities for Velka Pardubicka day, but Friday racing in October, with an early start due to the shortening days, seems unlikely to bring in much of a crowd.

An article in iDNES on February 26^th stated that Dostihovy Spolek, organizers of racing at Pardubice racecourse for the last 20 years, face back taxes and fines of hundreds of thousands of crowns for unpaid taxes and for a large amount of missing paperwork from 2009 and earlier. This is not a new story. There were certainly some holes in the accounts and moneys and goods went missing in the past. It is a bit like an Agatha Christie story, though thankfully without any fatalities. There are plenty of plausible suspects, but the police seem to be on the wrong track. I wish Poirot would come and sort things out - and quickly.

A Dostihovy Spolek press release this week boasted about the work that has been done and is now being done to improve the steeplechase course, and also to prepare the racecourse area for the carriage driving world championships, which are to be held at Pardubice racecourse this summer. Jiri Janda and his team have indeed done a lot of much-needed work in the last two and a half years to improve the grass, the fences and, not least, the irrigation and drainage. Nevertheless, in the last two summers, we have had a couple of extremely hot racing days on firm ground, in June 2012 and July 2013, when it might have been better to postpone or cancel the meetings. It would take a very sophisticated irrigation and draining system to make Pardubice racecourse good for summer chasing, as the local climate includes long periods of hot, dry weather in summer. The ploughed fields, which are a feature of the course, are normally dusty, occasionally muddy, and rarely provide good ground for horses to run on. On the second Sunday in October, however, the natural weather conditions normally ensure satisfactory ground for the big Velka Pardubicka meeting.

All of our racecourses have had their troubles, in recent years, and before that too. All have had financial problems. Although we have reasonable crowds on racedays, and often very good and enthusiastic crowds at the upcountry courses, many people get in for free, claiming rightly or wrongly to be connected with one of the horses. One of the tirades written at intervals on the Slusovice racecourse website by Zdenek Karlach, who heads the team that has for many years heroically kept racing going at Slusovice, conjured up images of crowds of people concealed in horseboxes, with the connivance of trainers, to avoid paying EUR 2.50 at the gate.

The Czech racecourses faced restitution problems - uncertainties about ownership when property was returned to its ‘original owners’ after 1989 - and the worst were at Prague Velka Chuchle and at Slusovice. I think that ownership of our racecourses is now resolved.

Sadly there has been no racing at Albertovec for a year or two. The present owners seem no longer to be prepared to make the enormous effort necessary to put a day of racing. Theft of the grandstand at Mimon for scrap metal a couple of years ago saw an end to racing there. A fire was set a few months ago at Brno racecourse. The suspected arson attack was of course a big blow for the organizers, but there will be racing there again this year. The building that burned down was nothing much, but it was all they had got. Racing at Tochovice came to an end when Vaclav Chaloupka decided that he was getting older, and enough was enough. Trainer Pavel Slozil hopes that racing will return to Radslavice one of these years, but a lot of work is needed on the turf.

In Slovakia, there is news of a new racecourse, at Samorin. Samorin is not far south of Bratislava, on the Danube, and there is a new centre with a sand track, a couple of kilometers away from the old course at Samorin, a traditional breeding centre.

2013 was a very difficult year for the organizers of racing here. The ongoing lack of money, and the long-term struggle to find sponsors, was made worse by cancellations due to frost at the beginning of April, flooding at Prague Velka Chuchle in June, and the heatwave in July. We should be aware than the organizers are under no obligation to put on loss-making race meetings. Organisers are the scarcest resource in Czech racing, as former Jockey Club president Vaclav Luka has pointed out.

It is therefore pleasing that the Jockey Club website has announced meetings on almost all Saturdays, Sundays and public holidays in the spring and summer. Autumn meetings will be announced later. What is less pleasing is that the race conditions are not yet announced. The Jockey Club has very recently announced that there will be a meeting of all organizers on March 10^th to deal with issues that affect the race conditions.

An important issue to be decided on is what to do about “owners prizes”. These have been awarded to owners of Czech-bred horses that are placed in medium and high-category races. I think that owners prizes are payable by the racecourse, and not centrally by the Jockey Club. There is also controversy about the horses that are classified as Czech-bred for the purposes of owners prizes. Some of our best mares are sent to be covered by sires abroad, and/or the foal may be born abroad. As long as the foal is registered here at a young age, it can qualify for owners prizes. Something like that - I will not now find out exactly what the conditions are, as they are going to be changed within the next few days. I hope I will be able in mid March to translate a press release or an article about the outcome of the meeting on March 10th.

The April newsletter will appear here shortly before the long-awaited beginning of our 2014 season. I hope readers from outside the Czech Republic are considering at least one visit to Czech Republic this year, to include not just racing but also some of the other attractions that the country has to offer.