The meeting at Pardubice on August 24th, on a mildly warm afternoon and on good-to-firm ground, featured the appearance of Josef Vana senior, on triple Velka Pardubicka winner, Tiumen, and also the VP warm-up races of Orphee des Blins and Trezor.
The explanation for the cancellation of the last of the three races in the Josef Vana Cup series of classical steeplechases is that the sponsor was unable to raise the money. The race was to have been held at Most Racecourse on August 31st.
Pardubice racecourse offers an attractive afternoon of steeplechasing on Saturday, August 24th, first race at 1 p.m.
Most racecourse and the Jockey Club of the Czech Republic have announced the cancellation of the final race in the Josef Vana Summer Cup series of classical steeplechases. The reason given is that the sponsors have failed to come up with the money.
As the three races in this series are the best-sponsored classical steeplechases of the Czech season, at CzK 1 million for each race, our trainers and riders will be sad to miss the opportunity to win a share of the prize money.
When the whole of Prague Velka Chuchle racecourse was under water at the beginning of June, the racecourse management set itself the task of being ready for racing on Czech St Leger day at the end of August. Much hard work has gone into cleaning up. It was announced a few weeks ago that the St Leger meeting would be put back until Sunday, September 1st. The structures at the racecourse are OK, and the very warm recent weather will have dried them out well. The main concern now is with the turf on the racetrack.
Accusations have been flying around and investigations have been ongoing at Dostihovy Spolek, organizers of events at Pardubice racecourse, for many years. Now, finally, two former members of the management team have been charged. Jiri Kunat, former reacecourse manager, and Ladislav Nermut, former member of the supervisory board, have been charged with conspiracy to embezzle, and one of them (unnamed) has been charged with (fraudulently) misrepresenting the Association's financial situation. More charges, involving other people, may be made. Both deny the charges.
The Council of the Czech Jockey Club has announced that Ronino, Lingarry and Frasini have not yet qualified for the 2013 Velka Pardubicka.
A loose horse cut across these three backmarkers right in front of the sixth fence in the June qualification race. They only took the fence at the second attempt (which is against our rules), and then all three completed the course. However, they are now deemed to have ‘turned aside’ at the sixth fence, and not to have met the qualification requirements.
The feature of last weekend's racing was the achievement of Tomas Hurt in training four winners in four successive races at Benesov - one at Category III, two at Category IV and one at Category V. He was on such a roll that the fourth of these winners was with a filly that had been tailed off in her only two previous races. Two of these winners were ridden by the apprentice, Katerina Hlubuckova, and were both carrying 48 kg, the minimum weight in our races.
The race meeting planned for Slusovice in August will not be held, due to the extreme weather in recent days. The heatwave has put Slusovice racecourse more of less out of action, and the organisers have called the August meeting off. For the moment, the racing calendar has been slimmed down, but it does seem that the most reasonable decision has been made.
Yet another race meeting has been affected by the weather conditions. According to the Jockey Club website, the meeting scheduled to be run at Slusovice on Saturday, August 17th has been cancelled, and no alternative date has been announced.
On the Slusovice racecourse website, Zdenek Karlach explains that there has been no rain on the racecourse for two months, and that the weather forecast is for more very hot weather. He says he is not able to get the course prepared and have it in a fit state for racing.
