In these monthly newsletters, I usually mention or discuss the recent weather, and the weather in July 2019 cannot pass unmentioned. All over northern Europe there was extraordinarily hot weather towards the end of the month, peaking on Thursday, July 25^th, with all-time record temperatures recorded in the UK and northern France. North of the Alps in central Europe, too, it was very hot. In Prague, as I write this on July 30^th, the heat wave is still persisting, but the forecast is for rain and less high temperatures for the next week, beginning tomorrow.

The media everywhere has tended to portray this extreme heat wave as a fun opportunity to go sunbathing, swimming and eating ice-cream on an outdoor holiday with the kiddies. Even on the hottest day, it was implied that we should continue to ignore health warnings about exposure to heat and direct sunshine, and that, for example, we should complain when public transport fails to function smoothly in extreme weather conditions. For me, July 25^th was a day of potential crisis, when technical systems were severely tested and inevitably sometimes failed, and when I personally, being of a certain age, should, above all, drink plenty of water, slow down and keep out of the direct sun. And that is what I did!

I imagine that most horseracing  professionals have been busy trying to keep their horses and themselves cool. Fortunately, there was little racing here in the second half of July. The hottest days fell in midweek, and, at least according to the official going, the racing that took place here in July was not on very hard ground.

The only major race here in July was the Czech Oaks, which was run at Karlovy Vary on July 21^sthttp://www.dostihovy-svet.cz/en/node/8557. Karlovy Vary is our coolest racecourse in the summer months, and is our only racecourse nowadays where we frequently have good-to-soft ground without artificial watering. Karlovy Vary is a famous old spa town, and the racecourse in its prime must have been quite grand. It is still a good place for horseracing.

This year is the 120^th anniversary of horseracing at Karlovy Vary, and our leading horseracing writer and historian, Martin Cáp, has written a book, in Czech, to commemorate the anniversary, under the title Příběhy lázeňských dostihů (The Story of Horseracing in a Spa Town), which appeared in the bookshops on July 8th. The book is 90 pages long, with descriptions of historic events, photographs, memories, and results of major races.

The Czech Oaks was yet another triumph for the yard of Helena Vocásková at Němčice, on the northern edge of Pardubice. Three years ago, this trainer amazed everybody by winning the flat trainers’ championship. Two years ago, she caused greater amazement by winning the jumps trainers’ championship, which had belonged to Josef Váňa senior for more than 20 years. And last year, she won both the flat trainers’ championship and the jumps trainers’ championship. This year, she and her team are currently well clear in the flat trainers’ championship, and just one winner behind Josef Váňa senior over fences. This has been a fantastic achievement by Helena Vocásková and her team, with win ratios that are truly impressive.

What is the secret of their success? Hard work and horsemanship, for sure. However, the stable seems also to have given absolute priority to winning those championships, while our other top trainers have been focusing on winning much bigger prizes at racecourses abroad. The owners of Nagano Gold, trained by Václav Luka, won much more prizemoney for their horse’s 2^nd place in the Hardwicke Stakes at Royal Ascot than all the Vocásek family’s owners have won in the whole season so far. Our trainers’ championships are awarded on the basis of races won.

The general policy of Helena Vocásková and her owners seems to be to enter their horses for the lowest possible category races, and to switch their horses between flat racing and hurdles chases rather than moving up a category. Because of their successes, however, they been attracting higher class young horses. Last year, Dylanka won the Czech Oaks and the Slovak Oaks on the flat, and this year she has won three Category IV races over hurdles and fences! Last year, Saul won a Category I race on the flat before midsummer and then a Category I race over hurdles after midsummer. He has spent the early part of this year running in Category III races on the flat! Famous Valley has been unbeaten in her last 9 races, four on the flat and 5 over jumps. In June 2019, she finally ran in a Category I flat race, at Karlovy Vary, and won it. Horses trained by the Vocásek family have run only in the Czech Republic and at Bratislava this year, while most other trainers with a promising horse take it to run abroad for much bigger prizemoney.

This year, Helena Vocásková's Falcon Baby won the Czech Oaks and Gold Memory finished in 2^nd place in that race, after winning the Czech One Thousand Guineas. Will she now be looking for Category V races over hurdles for these two good fillies?

I presume that the owners are happy to win numerous low-category races, in front of their owner, at Czech racecourses. Other Czech owners, whose horses are with other trainers, seem to be happy for their horses to run 1 000 kilometres away, but potentially for six times as much prizemoney, and watch the race on a video a couple of days later. The best deal, it seems to me, is Scuderia Aichner’s. Mr Aichner’s horses are trained in the Czech Republic by Josef Váňa junior, at a fraction of the cost of having them trained in Italy. The horses run almost entirely in Italy, where the owner lives. There have already been 35 winners owned by Scuderia Aichner and trained by Josef Váňa junior, since young Josef took out a trainer’s licence at the beginning of 2019.

Two jockeys deserve a special mention this month. Kazakh jockey Bauyrzhan Murzabayev is in just his third season in Germany after learning the job and winning the flat jockeys' championship three times in the Czech Republic. He now rides for top trainer Andreas Wöhler, and Murzabayev and Maxim Pecheur have drawn twenty winners ahead of all other jockeys in the German championship. Bauyrzhan Murzabayev calls the Czech Republic his second home, and his frequent visits to our courses see him surrounded by friends and well-wishers. Unfortunately for us, his success in Germany will make it more difficult for him to visit the Czech racecourses so frequently in future,

Secondly, good luck to Dana Bořánková, who has now won on three of her four rides over hurdles and fences. Helena Vocásková has given her two really good opportunities on odds-on favourites this year. In her only non-winning ride over fences, Sicili Pop fell at the second-last at Pardubice, when Dana Bořánková was moving him forward to make a challenge.

The autumn season at Pardubice begins on Saturday, August 10^th, and the feature race will be the third of the four VP qualification races. If this awfully hot summer really begins to turn into autumn less than two weeks from now, it will be a blessing.