The upcoming weekend offers a good range of horseracing in the Czech Republic. We begin on Friday evening, when there will be three races on the flat followed by three races over hurdles. A few years ago, we experimented with ‘bumpers’ at Pardubice, but they did not attract a lot of interest.
In October 2020, all the COVID-19 indicators for the Czech Republic went up and up, until we were informed that our figures were the worst for any country in Europe, perhaps with the exception of Andorra, and then the indicators just kept on going up. Finally, in the last couple of days of the month, the figures went down a little. The way back down will take longer than the way up.
Josef Bartoš’s injury at Merano has cost him not only his ride in this year’s Velka Pardubicka but also his leadership in the Italian jumps jockeys’ championship. The defender of the title has lost his lead in this year’s championship to his fellow countryman, Jan Faltejsek.
Before the race
The current situation is that the race meetings scheduled for Oct. 17th at Most, on Oct. 25th at Prague Velká Chuchle, and on Oct. 28th at Slušovice have all been postponed.
The race meetings at Most on Saturday, October 17th and at Pardubice on Saturday, October 24th have been cancelled.
12-y-o Hegnus has won the 130th running of the Velka Pardubicka, after four horses had run side-by-side for a while after the last fence. In the end, second place went to Player, Vandual finished third, and the remaining prize-money winners were Talent, Tzigane du Berlais, Casper and Lodgian Whistle.
Hegnus is owned by František Ševců and trained by Radek Holčák, and was ridden by Slovak jockey, Lukáš Matuský.
Every year, Christopher Simpson posts his pre-race analysis of the Velka Pardubicka on his website https://www.freewebs.com/becher123/
Although Chris has not been to Pardubice for far too long, he is able to follow Czech racing via the website of the Jockey Club of the Czech Republic and via YouTube.
He tells me that someone has now posted complete Czech Television coverage of Velka Pardubickas since 2002, but he did not give me a link.
