The Swedish Grand National and the Swedish Champion Hurdle are the main events in the meeting at Strömsholm on June 11th, and the Czech Republic will be well represented.
Recent monthly newsletters have been mainly about Czech racing management, and about the standoff between the racecourses and the Czech Jockey Club. However, the season is well under way, and Derby day will arrive in less than four weeks. It is now high time to give due attention to horses, jockeys and trainers.
Wroclaw racecourse will join the Crystal Cup crosscountry series next year, but is putting on a preparatory race this year on June 19th.
The organizers are pleased to have 21 entries for the
Forty-three horses have been entered for the 126th running of the Velka Pardubicka with Česká pojišťovna, which will be run at Pardubice on Sunday, October 9th. This is the smallest number of entries in recent years, but the quality appears to be good. Just five of the entries are trained outside the Czech Republic.
Not much more than a month ago it looked as if the stand-off between the Jockey Club of the Czech Republic (JCCR) and the racecourses could last for some time, and a lengthy delay to the beginning of our racing season was not impssible. However, the JCCR yielded in time for racing to begin in the middle of April, less than two weeks after the planned opening of the season.
PARDUBICE
The Swedish Grand National at Strömsholm racecourse will be run on June 11th. There are three other races over jumps on the day, including the Swedish Champion Hurdle. It is clear from the racecourse website that foreign entries will be welcome and that owners and connections will be very well looked after.
A press conference was held by Prague Velká Chuchle racecourse at the Park Inn Hotel on April 14th to mark the beginning of the 2016 horseracing season. We were informed that in 2015, for the first time ever, the racecourse held races with total prize money of over twenty million crowns.
