The bookies did not favour him as the potential favourite (the story is repeating), only to face a headache when Pretorian stuck his head over the finish line ahead of all the other horses. He proved that his 4th place in Turf Gala was in fact the consequence of (too) deep running and the result in that race would be completely different if the sky did not literary open up just before the race.

We are really looking forward for his next races and we are confident that he is going to confirm his abilities again soon. Maybe this time the bookies will learn to respect more the Pretorian/Zdenko Smida tandem. Zdenko’s fall at the start of Pretorian’s previous race was just an unfortunate event and not something to joke about.

Valorous Influence (SVK), on the other hand, had his own ideas about the race and gave Zdenko Smida no chance to use his jockey skills. He finished on the 8th place and we have to rethink the plans about his further racing activities.

(All photos by: Zsanett Berta)

On the upcoming Sunday ZWEGAT (GER) will try to win the prestigious Zlaty Bičik in Bratislava for the third time. Even though this is a 1400m race, where he should not have too many rivals, somehow this race is not meant to be. He ALWAYS finishes third, what is probably the result of the shorter finishing straight of the Bratislava racetrack. This year we have managed to secure the ride of Zdenko Šmida, ZWEGAT feels great and had a nice preparatory gallop on Magna Racino two weeks ago, so we hope for the best. They forecast a huge thunderstorm again for the raceday, so we can just hope that the sky does not open up the same way as it had opened on Turf gala day. Swimming is somehow not a featured domain of a racing thoroughbred 🙂

Hope to see you there. We should have some spare ZWEGAT caps for our fans, so look up for any of our team members and feel free to ask.