Eliška Kubinová has vivid memories of her first race, in October 2005. She rode Far Beck at Prague Velká Chuchle, and she finished dead last. “That was just awful, and I never want to ride in a race again.” That’s how she felt about it.
The race meeting at Prague Velká Chuchle on Easter Monday was run on a cool, sunny afternoon, on good-to-firm going.
To mark the publication of Richard Askwith’s book UNBREAKABLE on March 6th, Martin Cáp posted an interview with the author on www.jezdci.cz.
On Sunday at Prague Velká Chuchle, David Liška recorded his 50th winner, followed by his 51st winner.
https://www.freewebs.com/becher123/formguidefor2018velkapa.htmChris Simpson has been writing about steeplechasing in continental Europe for at least twenty years on the Becher123 website. Although it is a few years since he last came to Pardubice, he is still remarkably well informed. Where his opinions differ from mine, he is probably rigth. However, when the two of us agree, it is quite possible that we are both wrong.
The last of the four Velka Pardubicka qualification races run at Pardubice racecourse produced a good-quality race. At last, there was a qualification race run on a cool afternoon and on good ground. The ploughed fields were a bit dusty, but we must again be grateful to the ground staff for their hard work on preparing the course.
There were ten runners, including two promising young horses, Buonarotti and Tzigane du Berlais, that had not yet qualified for the big race on October 14th.
The race meeting planned for Kolesa on Saturday 11 August has been cancelled because of the rock-hard ground. The organizers at Kolesa intend to discuss whether a replacement date can be found in the autumn, and will make an announcement in September. The organizers apologize to everyone who had taken an interest in the race meeting, and ask for their understanding.
In preparation for writing the August 2018 newsletter, I jotted down a few ideas on what I might write about. Then, I decided to reread my August newsletters for 2015 to 2017. I was quite disappointed to see that most of my ‘ideas’ mentioned in the first sentence here had, in fact, been discussed in some detail in the August newsletters in each of the last three years!
Czech-trained horses took the first three places in a well-fought finish in the Slovak Derby at Bratislava last Sunday, and it was pleasing that the first two places went to horses that had been placed in the first three in the Czech Derby three weeks earlier.
The June qualification race for the 2018 Velka Pardubicka was run on good ground, on a pleasantly mild afternoon. Fifteen runners went to the start. Ange Guardian, which had finished 2nd in the May qualification race, started as favourite, and the second favourite was Zarif, also trained by Josef Váňa.
