Trainer Martina Růžičková had an exceptional year in 2016 as regards the results achieved by horses that she trained. She won the Velka Pardubicka and one of the Velka Pardubicka qualification races with Charme Look, and her 3-y-o filly Venillia finished 2^nd in the Oaks and won two good races. Nevertheless, at the end of the year, it is clear that far from everything went according to plan for her in 2016. She takes a more nuanced view of the year than might have been expected in view of her horse winning the Velka Pardubicka. Even that triumph, as is well known, did not turn out exactly the way the winning team had imagined it might.

“I have to say it was a year full of events and experiences, by no means all of them pleasant.” That is how Martina Růžičková summed up her year. “As it turned out, moments of euphoria alternated with depression, quite frequently, and I certainly would want not to experience anything quite like that again. The beginning of the year was far from happy for us. One of our 3-y-o fillies, with me on board, ran into a fence. I broke three ribs in the fall, and I was flown to the hospital in a helicopter. While I was there, I received a call that my husband [a well-known and popular actor] had had a fall and had had to go to the hospital for an operation for a brain haemorrhage. So that was a tough situation. I visited him with my broken ribs, and you can imagine the two of us at that point. On top of all that, it turned out that the filly had a birth defect and was blind. All in all, it was a very up-and-down year for us, full of troubles and joys, and it is not a year that I’d want to go through again.”

The wild succession of ups and downs followed the trainer into her personal life, into her training centre at Pohoří [up in the hills beyond the river that can be seen from the grandstand at Prague Velká Chuchle racecourse] and into the whole horseracing environment. “There were plenty of things this year that were not suitable for people of a sensitive disposition. Let us take the St. Leger. The race was won by [trainer] Lenka Horákova. I was very pleased for her, after the way she got the BORS horses back together [she had been brought in a few months earlier to take over a stable in disarray]. A few moments after the race, it became clear that there would be death and not happiness [as Grace of Gracie passed the winning post, his jockey Jiří Palík fell to the ground, and it was clear to see that the colt had broken a leg]. It was the saddest imaginable outcome. And the whole horrific epiosode played out within a period of five minutes.”

The biggest event for Martina Růžičková’s stable in 2016 was of course the Velka Pardubicka, and it involved much more than the period just before and just after the race. “It all began much earlier. When Bára was injured, we had only a few minutes to find a rider for the Qualification Race [the lady owner, the lady trainer, the whole stable and most followers of Czech racing had been looking forward for months to Barbora Málková riding Charme Look in the Velka Pardubicka, but at the August meeting at Pardubice she had a fall and broke a vertebra just before the qualification race]. Josef Váňa helped me out at that moment, and thanks to him, we were able to get Lukáš Sloup to ride. Then there were more decisions to be made. Charme Look is Bára’s horse, but if we’d waited for her until the next year, the horse would have missed the 2016 race, so we decided to carry on with him. Straightaway there was lots of well-intended advice about who to engage and who not to engage. I know that my acquaintances mostly meant it well, but it was terribly wearisome to explain to them what I thought and why. I knew I wasn’t going to ride him myself – he deserved better than that – though theoretically I could have substituted for Bára. Then there was all the pressure just before the Velka. It didn’t come only from the media, which you have to count with, but also from all friends and acquaintances. However, we dealt with everything, at the cost of Bára spending some time beside the horse in her sleeping bag, to make sure he had everything he needed for the race.”

Even after the Velka, Charme Look’s win did not put an end to all the stress around the race. “After everything that had happened the previous year [when first-past-the-post Nikas was subsequently disqualified when banned substances were found in his body fluid samples], I was nervous until the day when the doping control results were announced. Of course, I knew we hadn’t given anything to the horse, but they surely hadn’t done anything the year before, either. I didn’t sleep easy for a long time. We’d fed him with the same feed and we hadn’t changed anything, but after what had happened a year before, you just couldn’t be sure. If something similar had happened to what happened then, it would have been a disaster. Not just for us, but for the whole of horseracing, and of course for Mrs Dušková, the owner, and she wouldn’t have deserved anything like that.”

Once the trainer got the doping millstone off her back, still in October, she was none too pleased about the stable’s riders leaving for abroad [see the interview above with Kateřina Hlubučková http://www.dostihovy-svet.cz/en/node/6900] “There was still a lot of work to be done here, mainly with the young horses, so I was fed up. All year we’d been trying to set up a home-from-home atmosphere in the stable, so that everyone would feel good with us. I know that’s the way it is nowadays for the riders, and most of them do it, but it meant a lot of work for Bára and me. It all took the place of having a bit of a rest, getting ready for Christmas, and having more time for my husband, who is not too well. Some days I was just too tired to speak.”

Martina Růžičková is pleased with her horses and with the results they achieved in 2016. “Of course, I have to give my big thanks to the owners, who stood by us in times when things were not going well, and it wasn’t easy. I’m glad their horses have started to pay them back. What Charmík did in the Velka proved that he is great. He’s now in good spirits and full of energy. He seems to be fine. We are currently preparing thirty horses, and we are looking forward to having more,” Martina Růžičková says.

Even after all the difficulties of 2016, she is looking forward to the new year and to the horse racing that the year will bring. “I still enjoy what I do, so I’m trying to put everything into preparing our horses this winter.” Martina Růžičková believes that her horses will achieve some good and pleasing results in 2017. If possible, however, she hopes the coming year will not be such a roller coaster ride.

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This interview by Petr Guth first appeared in the Czech language pages of Dostihový svět. Translated by Robin Healey