I am now back on British soil, no thanks to British Airways flight delays of 6 hours over both flights. We arrived in Czech at 3.30am on Friday morning having had a very long journey out. We were out of bed fairly early after not much sleep as I wanted to show Mark Grant the fences and school Lambro over a number of them. The schooling session went well, he jumped the bank and the wall and various other fences all without a lead leaving us feeling pretty confident afterwards. Having had a few difficulties arranging hospitably for the owners previous to my arrival I had a meeting with Hana (our liaison out there) on Friday afternoon, it was quite clear that they had no interest in having foreign runners and were not prepared to offer any hospitably other than entrance tickets and eventually badges for the paddock. They did not even suggest something we could pay for!
On Saturday after battling over night with the mosquitoes in our hotel room we went to the racecourse to see Lambro do a canter before heading into Prague. We met with the owners for a fantastic lunch at the Palffy Place. It really is one of Prague's gems, it was the most beautiful castle and served delicious food and wine. Lunch lasted until late afternoon after which Katya and I headed back to Pradubice to focus on events the next day. I gather most of the owners and some other English supporters had a huge supper at the Buddha Bar hotel and judging by a few sore heads in the morning that some absinthe may have been involved!
On Sunday morning I was up early to walk the course with Mark Grant again. The weather was quite warm so I am glad we managed to clip him before he left England. There was a parade of ex jockeys that had won the Pardubice so I was asked to take part in this, again in typical Czech style it was organised at the eleventh hour. It was amazing to see familiar faces from my time back in 1995, three of which were riding in this years race!
When the owners arrived we based our selves in the not so glamorous stable yard canteen outside the weighing room with some warm beer in plastic glasses! Eventually we made it to one of the grandstands where we had been given some numbered seats, at least there we could find the odd bottle of Champagne there! Lambro seemed to handle all the preliminaries well including the parade but had got rather hot. In the race itself Mark jumped off and got a lovely position midfield down the inside when he got to the fourth fence the Taxis Lambro ran a little bit to his left and by doing so jumped straight into the horse that had fallen in front of him. Mark did well to stay on him but he had lost a lot of ground. There was very little time to regain his confidence before the fifth fence which was a large bank leaving him slow over the obstacle in last place . However he had plenty of time to work his way back into the race and had a lovely position travelling well in the middle of the field before slipping after the large water which threw away chance of finishing higher up the order. Mark enjoyed his ride and was very glad he put his stirrups down a hole in the paddock!
Speaking to a Swedish Trainer on Sunday he had experienced similar problems with the lack of hospitality. It seems there is a new committee organising the meeting who didn't seem to have a clue how to look after anyone associated with the horses as it was clear to see that local trainers were also having the similar problems. It was very different to previous trips out there where everyone was so well looked after. I remember there was even a party in the castle on Sunday night for everyone involved, if that happened again this year we definitely weren't on the invite list! At the end of the day the horse is in one piece and now almost at the ferry port so will be home safe and sound shortly and I think despite all the troubles our owners had a lovely trip mainly due the great camaraderie between everyone and the lovely time they had staying in Prague. I will post some pictures of the weekends events when we have them all.
In other stable news it is back to earth with a bump with two lots in the pouring rain. We are now concentrating on getting some winners over here. We have entries at Cheltenham and Kempton over the weekend. The horses all seem to be coming to hand quite quickly and are in terrific form. Gavin, Mark, Crosse and Johnny schooled 9 horses last Thursday morning. All the older handicap chasers had a pop and Attimo was electric over fences being tried over these for the first time. We also schooled a couple of young horses that will run over hurdles for the first time. I will do plenty more schooling over the next couple of weeks to make sure they are all sharp and well prepared.
No comments:
Post a Comment