A happy new year, everybody. In horseracing, new years are full of hope, with the birth of foals in the early months, promising three-year-olds appearing as soon as winter is over, and two-year-olds going through their paces later in the season.

Our website has been running a questionnaire, asking readers whether they consider that Czech racing in 2016 was better than, worse than or about the same as in 2015. Twenty-five per cent said better, 51% said worse, and 25% said they had not noticed any significant difference. My vote was for no difference. I am happy enough if people make the necessary effort to keep racing going, and if they are kind and tolerant towards me. As a fan, I think my role is to enjoy afternoons at the races, not to be excessively demanding, and above all not to be an ‘old complainer’. I was again a satisfied customer in 2016, as I am every year, and expect to be in 2017.

Owners, of course, put a lot in to racing, and are entitled to expect something in return. The trainers, jockeys, stable staff and other professionals that make a (mostly very modest) living out of racing certainly deserve to work in a well-managed environment. No doubt plenty of people feel they have got less out of their efforts than they have put in, or have not had much luck. In racing, there are always many more losers than winners, so there will always be people who feel the season did not go well for them. I just hope that optimism will return for them in springtime, and that 2017 will be their lucky year.

By the end of 2016, most of our trainers had gone into winter mode, and their horses were taking a break before preparing for their campaign in 2017. In an interview that I intend to translate when I get round to it, trainer Martina Růžičková complained that her talented staff, painstakingly gathered and made into a team, no doubt, has been disappearing abroad for the winter. She and Barbora Málková are left to keep the yard ticking over until springtime, with whatever help they can muster. However, the talented young people that she has gathered in her yard have better ways to spend the winter than freezing in the hills south west of Prague, taking horses out for some light exercise, all for modest money, while putting on weight and dreaming about distant April.

Ambitious young Czech riders have better opportunities, and should take them. They should spend the winter seeing the horseracing world, learning their craft and gaining experience, working in leading yards in France, the UK or Ireland, or in Germany or Italy. Or they should go to the Gulf States, Hong Kong, Australia. In the major centres of horseracing, there are nowadays Czech communities ready to introduce new talented young members to their community, and to help them to settle in. Many trainers round the world consider that a young person with an apprenticeship completed in the Czech Republic is reasonably likely to ride and care for horses competently, to know what is required in a racing stable, and to be prepared to arrive sober, early in the morning, and work quite hard for a modest income.

Another interview that I intend to translate one of these days was with Jan Faltejsek. He spoke about the difficulty he has faced while trying to break through for many years as a steeplechase jockey in the UK, in France, and again in the UK. The winning jockey in the Velka Pardubicka in four of the last five years (2012-2014 on Orphée des Blins, and in 2016 on Charme Look) has had two periods at George Charlton’s yard in Northumberland, and also spent a couple of years with trainer Guillaume Macaire, in France. With Macaire, one of the leading jumps trainer in France, he faced a lot of competition from French riders. George Charlton, on the other hand, works far away from the main training centres and racecourses in the UK. Charlton is said to be very happy to have a good jockey based in his yard and available to ride most of his horses. However, very few other trainers and owners in the UK use his services.

I do not know what to say. In other sports, most notably in football, there is desperate competition for the services of the most talented performers. In steeplechasing, however, foreign jockeys seem to be considered to have some unspoken, inexplicable, but grave shortcoming, bred into them, or fed in with their mother’s milk. I was dismayed to read the words of the owner of Delight My Fire, after the mare’s recent race at Cheltenham. I will translate the whole of the interview one of these days. However, what dismayed me was the following part of the dialogue:

What programme do you have for Delight My Fire in the winter? Will she be resting and gathering strength for next season?

She’ll mainly be resting, and we must think about her future races. Niklas Lovén has commitments to other Swedish owners, and that might lead to a problem for some of her races. We have therefore decided to look for a future constant jockey for her races at home and abroad.

I don’t know quite how to interpret that. There are not so many Czech jockeys that one would want to have on Delight My Fire in the 2017 Velka Pardubicka. Let us go through the list. Josef Váňa jnr and Jan Kratochvíl will presumably be required to ride good horses all season and on the second Sunday in October for Josef Váňa snr. Jaroslav Myška will give priority to horses trained by his wife - in very close collaboration with himself. Jan Faltejsek will be hoping to ride Charme Look again. Marek Stromský will probably want to ride Nikas again. Lukaš Matuský will presumably be tied to horses trained by the Holčáks. That leaves Josef Bartoš, who is a free agent. He finished third in the VP on Zarif in 2016, and that is just one of the horses that he will no doubt be offered to ride in VP 2017. He surely would not be able to commit to Delight My Fire for the whole season, as he will have major commitments in Italy. He will presumably wait until the end of June before choosing his ride for VP 2017. Owner Jana Precliková is overoptimistic to think that any of the top Czech jockeys will make himself available for all Delight My Fire’s races in 2017. The owner and her trainer, Radim Bodlák, won’t find anyone better than Niklas Lovén, the veteran Swedish jockey, who exerted himself remarkably to ride the mare at Wroclaw, Pardubice, Slušovice and Cheltenham in 2016, and seems to have established a good relationship with her.

My hope is that 2017 is the year when world steeplechasing and Czech steeplechasing will at last start to think internationally. My new year’s resolution for this website is to press more actively for the interests of jockeys in the central European space, and above all to attack the idea that there is something wrong with foreign jockeys. They are not only skilled horsemen – they also have the necessary heart and spirit. Their mobility proves their commitment.