Sixteen, double winner of the Velka Pardubicka, passes on

At the age of 20, grey mare Sixteen, two-time winner of the Velka Pardubicka, has had to be put down. She ran in the colours of BUC Film, and she spent the last years of her life in the riding section of the Czech University of Life Sciences in Prague – Suchdol. She finished her racing career in 2012, after running in 51 races, including 10 wins, and she won more than nine million Czech crowns (about EUR 350 000) in prizemoney.

 

Sixteen and her racing career even made her into the heroine of a film, which was released in 2013. She won the Velka Pardubicka in 2007, ridden by Dušan Andrés, and in 2008 she was ridden to victory by Josef Bartoš in a race in which another grey, Amant Gris, was first past the post. However, Amant Gris was disqualified for missing a marker. In three subsequent Velka Pardubickas, Sixteen twice took second place and once finished third. However, in her last Velka in 2012 she did not get round.

 

Except in her first VP winning race, she was ridden in all of her races at Pardubice by Josef Bartoš, for whom the mare was a special horse. “I remember her not just for the races I rode on her. We always had a close relationship with her. My wife looked after her in the stables, and she was a kind of horse for our family. In addition, she performed exceptionally as a racehorse. I finished four times in the first three on her in the Velka. She was an exceptional mare.”

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This article, written by Pet Guth, first appeared in our Czech language pages.