Eliška Kubinová has vivid memories of her first race, in October 2005. She rode Far Beck at Prague Velká Chuchle, and she finished dead last. “That was just awful, and I never want to ride in a race again.” That’s how she felt about it.

However, things have turned out differently. Horses found their way back to the girl from Jeseníky, but not until she had left for another continent to get away from them. Four years after graduating from the School for Apprentices, she jumped up into the saddle again, and started winning one race after another.

With 385 winners to her name, Eliška Kubinová is the most successful woman jockey in Czech horseracing history. She is also the mother of two children, and she is intensively helping her husband, Jorge Rosales, with the family stables at Emerald Downs, in the suburbs of Seattle.

A former successful Mexican jockey, Jorge Rosales recently set up as a trainer. “I’m delighted that we managed to get going. When we started, we had no big ambitions, nor even much of an idea. Now we have 15 horses and some excellent owners. We dedicate ourselves fully to the horses,” says Eliška.

She last put on racing colours in January 2018, when she had already ridden 8 winners in the new year. Whether she will add to her number of winners in the forseeable future is written in the stars. “I don’t feel any strong urge,” she says “I’m 30 years old, I have two children, and I’ve been through quite a heavy fall. I could ride, but the risk isn’t worthwhile, and Jorge and I already have a different mission.”

When Eliška looks back over her unexpected career, she has to smile. It seems improbable, even to her.

“A lot more has come about than I’d ever expected, and even now I don’t have any big dreams. I have to admit that I like the little successes most of all. When the horses do well, and there’s a winner once in a week, or several in a month. That’s what gives me fulfilment,” she reflects.

I wasn’t ready for it

She didn’t particularly want to go to the school for apprentices. She thought about going to the technical middle school for civil engineering, and she planned to go and study at a university.

“However, my mother had a special idea. She took me to Chuchle [where the school for apprentices is at the racecourse]. It looked interesting to me, and mainly I wanted to get away from Jeseníky, and in the end that’s where I went. But racing didn’t grab me, it was just something exotic,” Eliška recalls. 

For a long time, it did not occur to her that she might ride in races, and she did not much want to. While she was at the school for apprentices, she rode in a total of 15 races, without a winner, on each occasion in the colours of horses belonging to the school or being prepared by trainers at Velká Chuchle. “I wasn’t ready for it, not at all,” she says, in retrospect.

After a short stay in Ireland, she had had enough of horses. She went back to school to take her secondary school leaving exams, and then left for the USA as an au pair. She had left racing behind. For two years, she had not sat on a horse. She spent 6 months in New York, and then she moved to Seattle, on the west coast.

“When I arrived, I hardly knew any English. I went to school for a while in New York. Being there alone, I had no other option, and I just had to learn the language somehow. People didn’t understand me too well, but, as a matter of fact, it wasn’t so bad," she says, with a smile.

All of a sudden, everything just happened...

A breakthrough came about when she found out one day that there was a racecourse called Emerald Downs not far from Seattle. She had to admit to herself that she missed horses. Quite a lot. In the morning, she took the child she was looking after to school, and then she went to look at the stables. 

However, it was not so easy to get on to the horses. Eliška found that people were not interested in her, and after a month she had almost given up her efforts. 

Just then, the first piece of luck turned up. She came across a trainer who was returning to training after taking a break, and he was short of people in his stable. And he took on the unknown girl from Europe.

“In the morning I fed them, mucked them out, and rode the horses if I knew what was expected for them to do. The other people came along later. I liked it terrifically, and gradually I got back into it. I did just about everything in the stable, which is not usual here. I quickly took some weight off, got fit, and there was a buzz going round that I should try riding in races,” Eliška recalls.

It took a while to convince her. The memories of her inglorious beginnings at Velká Chuchle were still alive, and the 22-year-old girl still did not have any ambitions as a rider. Finally, she agreed to ride a filly that she knew well from work.

 “All of a sudden, everything just happened. In the second week, other trainers began to put me up on their horses, even against my will,” Eliška laughs.

The young Czech girl’s assets were not just that she had shown that she was a good work rider, but above all that she had never ridden a winner. Thanks to that technicality, she qualified as an apprentice rider, with a right to claim an allowance.

“I started completely from zero. I had no idea where I was going, and then I won three races in a day at Emerald Downs, and the top local agent called me to go with him to Portland Meadows racecourse. There, I rode ten horses a day, and I just didn’t have time to think about what was going on. Everything got started terribly quickly,” she adds.

Wins in the colours of Zenyatta

In that first year, Eliška Kubinová won thirty races. The following season, there were 118 more, and she became only the second Czech rider ever, after Filip Minařík, to win more than 100 races in a period of twelve months.

She rode winner after winner. At the age of 23, she set a new record for an apprentice rider at Emerald Downs, with 76 winners in a season. She took second place in the championship at Portland Meadows. On March 7^th, 2012, she hit the headlines by winning six races on the same day.

In the autumn of 2012, she made her successful debut in California. A day to remember was at Hollywood Park, which no longer exists as a racecourse, when she rode Valeria to victory for famous trainer John Shirreffs. She then put on the colours of owners Jerry and Ann Moss to ride Zenyatta.

“It was a fantastic experience, and I got that ride quite by chance. Trainer Shirreffs was enthusiastic about me, and he let me ride a lot of horses at work. Everyone thought it was a big break for me, and that my career would go up and up, but Hollywood Park racecourse was closed down, and trainer Shirreffs moved on. It’s a pity, but nothing more came out of that contact,” Eliška says with regret.

In this phase, too, the hardest thing for her was to ask for work and to fight for further opportunities. “It’s normal here for jockeys to go from stable to stable and to ask every morning if they can help out in some way. And mainly the answer is No. It was very difficult for me to go back the next day and ask again. I still can’t do it,” she adds.

Her daughter and son are both winners

Within just three years, Eliška Kubinová became the most successful female jockey in Czech horseracing history. In 2014, she won 62 races, and she received the Lindy Award, which is given at Emerald Downs on the basis of a questionnaire among the jockeys for a sense of fair play and dedication to the sport.

Five years later, she is a mother of two, and although her career as a rider has been suppressed in recent years, she remains a major figure at Emerald Downs. 

Together with her, there is her four-year-old daughter Emilka and younger son Adam. Despite their youth, they are racehorse owners in the family yard. The horseracing rules and regulations in Washington State and in Oregon allow minors to hold an owner's licence.

 Emilka’s first winner was the appropriately-named filly Czech Chic. 

 “It was a small sensation at the time, because Emilka is the youngest winning owner in the USA. Adam has already had his first winner at Portland. In California, for example, it couldn’t have happened. It varies from state to state,” Eliška explains.

 Further plans? The owners will decide

 The family currently lives in Seattle, but American trainers have to keep moving their horses from racecourse to racecourse during the season. With small children, that is not so easy.

 “We’ve been thinking where we are going to settle when Emilka goes to school, but we don’t know yet. Portland Meadows racecourse was closed down recently, and there won’t be any more racing there. We’ll have to try something new. We have a licence set up in California, where we can move to in case of need, and we can also imagine working in Texas. It will depend what our owners want,” she says. 

When asked whether there is still any such thing as the American Dream, Eliška Kubinová answers without hesitation.

“There certainly is. And I think more young people from the Czech Republic should try it here. Specially if they haven’t won five races. Then they can start out here with the status of an apprentice and catch hold here. I’d wish them good luck," says the most successful Czech female jockey.

photo: from Eliška Kubinová’s collection

This is a translation of an interview taken by Martin Cáp, which first appeared on www.jezdci.cz

You can find an earlier English-language interview with Eliška Kubinová from 2013 on http://www.dostihovy-svet.cz/en/node/2505