Velka Pardubicka. Check Grand National type race

I watched it yesterday after someone said in the GN thread how bad it was, I though it was ok and quite interesting to watch, and it looks like they have also made improvements over the years as I also watched the 1981 race (I think that year) and its awful, looks like they are riding though plowed fields at one point and the horses look like they are struggling, the water is REALLY deep, horses falling into it upto their necks.... last years race looked far better.
 
My mother had a very eccentric friend who took is nutter of a hunter over there in his trailer to do this race. Sadly it broke it's back on one of the banks and he came back with the trailer full of beer instead!!
 
Yes, I think the earlier races were really tough but they've had to make it safer for the horses. There's also a story about an English jockey who'd lost his licence to race after a broken neck? He got forged documents so at he could take part. Can't remember the jockeys name.
 
Jeepers! That race was mad, but the leading horses still seemed to be going on strongly at the end. The 'double' hedges, the water, the bank - we don't have any of that over here.
 
I happened to watch the Velká pardubická from 1999 some days ago, besides that many of the jumps didn't look like the steeplechase fences that I'm used to see (i.e. stonewall, double jumps and several water jumps), the further into the race as I watched, the more I wondered how much time the jockeys had spent on memorising the course, it didn't make much sense to me, there was so many turns, they rounded one of the fences, somewhere they must have made a loop, because later they came back and passed some parts of the track again, but in the other direction...

:confused:

I looked up the race on Wikipedia, hoping that they would have a map showing the course, which they didn't, but I did notice that it says "In 2008, Amant Gris was first past the post, but was disqualified for taking the wrong course."
 
I found this really interesting....
They aren't out-and-out TB racehorses are they? they look like hunter types to me.
it was interesting to note how few fallers/refusals there were.
Yes, the fences aren't quite as huge as on the National course, but they aren't small, and they are much more varied, and the ground variation was incredible (turf, plough.... ).
the horses are jumping rather than hurdling through the fences, they all show each fence plenty of respect - they look more like eventers tackling a cross country course en-masse

this all makes me wonder if it's not the fences or the jockeys that are the problem with the Grand National, but the horses....
 
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mmmmm Enda..... :D :D :D


I like the race - its tough, its foreign with all the quirks - and I dont know that Id fancy taking on the Taxis but its a decent race and the horses seem to do ok in it.
 
TrasaM said:
Yes, I think the earlier races were really tough but they've had to make it safer for the horses. There's also a story about an English jockey who'd lost his licence to race after a broken neck? He got forged documents so at he could take part. Can't remember the jockeys name.
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It was Charlie Mann. My dad has done this race twice, and was 9th in 1983 :D. I was only about 16 at the time but got to go one year. Anybody who thinks the National fences are big ought to find a picture of the taxis fence in this race, it's a horse and people eating drop hedge of lunatic proportions. I'll see if I can find a photo and scan it in. There is also an interesting double of hedges - fun at that sort of speed!

One year dad fell and his horse galloped off into the Czech countryside - there were no boundary fences to the course (and if you watch the videos you can see the horses actually cross the track of other horses racing in other directions, it's literally chaos) and the horse just kept galloping. Well eventually they found him - in a farmer's stable - and had to buy him and his tack separately back from the farmer in order to take him home!

Just googled the Taxis and found this one - it wasn't this 'clean' in the 80s!
pardubice3_zps260891c8.jpg


If anyone's interested here is a video of the 1983 race, dad was on Wells Fargo and you can hear his name crop up towards the beginning - I think the Taxis is about the 3rd jump shown and he jumped it in second, pecking on landing. I think he had a couple of stops around the course too but its one of those races where you can fall off, get back on, refuse, have another go and still go on to finish :p

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UjboXLc5oSY
 
Angelbones said:
It was Charlie Mann. My dad has done this race twice, and was 9th in 1983 :D. I was only about 16 at the time but got to go one year. Anybody who thinks the National fences are big ought to find a picture of the taxis fence in this race, it's a horse and people eating drop hedge of lunatic proportions. I'll see if I can find a photo and scan it in. There is also an interesting double of hedges - fun at that sort of speed!

One year dad fell and his horse galloped off into the Czech countryside - there were no boundary fences to the course (and if you watch the videos you can see the horses actually cross the track of other horses racing in other directions, it's literally chaos) and the horse just kept galloping. Well eventually they found him - in a farmer's stable - and had to buy him and his tack separately back from the farmer in order to take him home!

Just googled the Taxis and found this one - it wasn't this 'clean' in the 80s!
pardubice3_zps260891c8.jpg


If anyone's interested here is a video of the 1983 race, dad was on Wells Fargo and you can hear his name crop up towards the beginning - I think the Taxis is about the 3rd jump shown and he jumped it in second, pecking on landing. I think he had a couple of stops around the course too but its one of those races where you can fall off, get back on, refuse, have another go and still go on to finish :p

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UjboXLc5oSY
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:) I went through some of the old races yesterday and I watched the one with Wells Fargo. I'm absolutely certain that if I'd been a jockey this race would have been on my to-do list.
That mare who won last year was quite amazing, Orphee De Blins, never put a hoof wrong the whole way.
It's a shame some of the older footage is so poor so it's hard to see accurately but the horses taking part the 1980s And earlier races looked to be much heavier than some more recent participants.. It's certainly testing.
Just can't help wondering what Sprinter Sacre would think of it :D
 
I usually try and watch it every year, and it is complete chaos usually! Such a variety of jumps and terrain.

I've been trying to find statistics for injuries/fatalities in order to compare it to the National. The horses usually seem to be heavier, I guess more like the old style steeplechasers.
 
EKW said:
I've read that a horse owned by Sean Connery was in the race, does anybody know if that is true, and if so, how did it go? QUOTE]

Risk Of Thunder was Connery's horse and it came 2nd, trained by the master of the XC racecourses Enda Bolger and ridden by Ken Whelan.

There were a few British/Irish trained horses in the race:

http://www.racingpost.com/horses/re...lts_top_tabs=re_&results_bottom_tabs=ANALYSIS
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Thank you EKW, for satisfying my curiosity. :D


I've watched the race from 1983 Angelbones, it was quite interesting, :eek: those fences definitely looked "worse" back then, than in the 1999 and 2012 years version of the race, :eek: when it looked like the leaders would have to criss cross between horses and jockeys going in a different direction than the one they were going in! And according to what I've just read, your father and Wells Fargo was in the lead/amongst the leaders up until the "In and Out", and they finished the race and became ninth, a late congratulation to that achievement.


I don't know what to say about that your father had to buy back his horse and tack separately from a farmer another year. Maybe your father should have done like the Russians I read about in one of Maesfan's links, and tied himself to his horse! According to what it said in the link, the Russians tied an elastic string between themselves and their horse's reins, so that in case they fell off, they would be more likely to be able to keep hold of their horse, thus more likely to be able to remount. It increased the risk of them being dragged, but they still did it. :eek:


I've opened and read your three links Maesfan, they were interesting, I especially got stuck on this site http://www.freewebs.com/becher123/abriefhistory18841978.htm, and I'm glad that it isn't just me that is interested in more than just the winners, I mean Josef Váňa is amazing, having won so many times, both as rider and as trainer, and to keep on, not only riding, but winning such a race when over 55 years old, that is not done by just anyone.

Still, I'm just as fascinated by the stories about horses who i.e. disliked running on the ploughed surface, or seem to remember a fence that they hadn't jumped that well the previous year and next year refuses at that same jump or that Frenchman, who on his his first attempt to ride the race, nearly died (needed heart massage and was unconscious for several days) after crashing at fence number 4, the Taxis (can't recall that it said anything about the horse, but the horse competed again next year, so he can't have been too badly hurt), yet, this Frenchman came back five times more! :eek: Three of those times his rides ended at, the Taxis! But one year in between those rides who ended at fence four, he actually cleared the Taxis, only to have his horse refuse at fence number five, the Irish Bank, instead. The last year he competed in the Velká pardubická, he also managed to clear the Taxis, but he ended up wedged in a hedge at the "In and Out", which I think is the double jump fence number 8 and 9.

I could spend ages reading on such a site, thank you for the link Maesfan. :D


;) By the way, Sweden have two Grand Nationals, the Swedish Grand National (who I don't think is anywhere near as impressing as either the Grand National or the Velká pardubická):
[youtube]IvW0aidPW80[/youtube]

And the Gotland Grand National, I've read that it is the largest Enduro race in the world (from one of their equivalent to "worst fence" on the course):
[youtube]rGtoWuYuiV0[/youtube]

:D
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