
Café
Mozart is the yellow building at the top right of this picture
On Saturday, we took a day trip by train to Kutna Hora, a
UNESCO World Heritage site. If you ever
go there be sure to visit St. Barbara’s church:

St.
Barbara church, Kutna Hora
I have recommendations regarding train travel in the Czech
Republic:
1.Travel
first class, it’s only marginally more expensive.
2. Buy
your tickets/seats online, it’s cheaper and easier than at the train station.
3. Use www.cd.cz,
the official Czech site. You can print your tickets in advance. Other firms
offer tickets online but tend to be more expensive.
4. Carry
photo ID.
Our first-class return tickets to Pardubice cost
around 400, CZK each. Trains are frequent. We left Prague 9:30am on Sunday hoping
to catch the opening ceremony at 11:00am. Courtesy buses were available at
Pardubice station followed by a short walk to the track.

The
“boys” enjoying their first-class rail travel
Entrance was 190, CZK with racecards @ 120, CZK.

Approaching
the track on foot, grandstands in the distance
As we arrived they were blessing the track, “Please
God do not let us all fall down, amen.”, was the English snippet I heard. It was an eight-race card culminating in the feature race and of course we
knew nothing about the first seven races.
Runners in the sixth race jump the
last, one of the smaller fences
As for punting we only bet on the big one. On-course
betting is a computer-based monopoly which at first glance resembles a tote
system. But it’s not, you take fixed odds albeit in a massively over-round book.
For example, the favourite was evens on-track and 3/1 in the UK.
We decided to play the two French runners as they
looked reasonable value against the home hopes. One of these was unseated in an
early pile-up (God obviously not watching). Our main selection, Cheltenham Trials
Day winner Urgent De Gregaine, was well clear with one to jump (noticed 1.13 on betfair) but it was caught on the run-in by No Time To Lose. Here is one of my betting
slips:

You
can see from this slip I had a "monkey" @ 12/1 whereas Urgent De Gregaine was returned 14/1 (in the UK)
By the time the
big race was run (16:40 CET) it had rained a lot and consequently horses were finishing very
tired after their 4m 2.5f journey.

Jan
Kratochvil celebrates his victory on No Time To Lose
At the station there was time for an excellent pint of
Gambrinus (29, CZK) in a grotty bar before returning to Prague. Back in the
capital we ended up in Pipa Beer Story which had eight draft beers on tap:

Note
five cannabis lager (!) and eight plain porter from Dublin!

Delicious beer snacks to accompany the eight drinks on offer

Me
with a fellow racegoer at Pardubice...
October 2017