“When I don’t ride for a long time, my back hurts. I go to work every morning with gusto, I always ride two or three horses and I maintain solid physical condition,” explained Váňa to the website iSport.cz, who, according to his words, will no longer be seen in the role of a jockey at the races. The last time this happened was six years ago.
Váňa also recedes into the background as a trainer in the stables near Chyš in Karlovy Vary and leaves the work to other family members. “Pepč’s son trains the horses of owner Josef Aichner, led by L’Estran, already a four-time winner of the Merano Gran Premio. My wife writes works for the other horses, I rather supervise it and ride the biggest horses we have in the stable,” smiles the ever-vital Váňa, who has to accept the fact that the offspring sometimes have a different point of view.
“He’s slowly starting to direct it his way. I don’t agree with anything, but the truth is that it has results. But if he had listened to me more, those horses certainly wouldn’t have been so injured,” says Váňa, whose name is well known even by people who are not fond of horse racing.
When the young people get mad at me, I’ll start messing around and they’ll see
He rode the great Pardubice race twenty-eight times, most recently in 2014. But he is not planning a comeback. “Pardubická is about a lot of hard work not only of the horse, but of course also of the rider. I’ll leave that to the younger ones. But when they annoy me, I’ll start working harder and they’ll see. No, I’m just kidding,” claims Váňa, who celebrated his first triumph in the famous steeplechase as a thirty-five-year-old in 1987 in the saddle of the legendary Železník.
He then won three more times with him, then once with Vronský and added three more victories with Tyumen. At this year’s Velká Pardubická, he was not very funny as a coach. He sent two wards to the start. The 2017 winner No Time To Lose with jockey Ondřej Velko fell at Hadí kopopa in his last race of his career, Dusigrosz with Marko Stromský did not finish either. “Every failure annoys me, but I know that racing includes both joy and sadness. The important thing is that everyone, riders and horses, remained healthy and No Time To Lose is retiring as a thirteen-year-old fighter who has brought a lot of joy during his career,” says Váňa.
It is identified with the text of Michal Tučný’s old song that it is impossible to live without horses.
He also has valuable advice for his peers. “It’s better to go for a walk or a run than to sit at home and wait for death,” says a short man with a smile, who probably doesn’t have a bone in his body that he hasn’t broken at some point. He survived clinical death, suffered a stroke and five concussions, had broken all the ribs, two vertebrae, five collarbones, both wrists and the jaw and a lot of other bones. “If you want to get rid of me, you’ll probably have to shoot me,” declares a native of the Wallachian village of Slopná, from where the Josef educational hiking trail leads to nearby Vizovice Vani.
Non-playing captain of the FC Taxis team
He enjoyed celebrating his milestones with people from the horse racing environment in Mladá Boleslav during a traditional football match between jockeys and showjumpers. “I have been the non-playing captain of the FC Taxis team for many years, I have provided an honorable kick-off. The pig was also roasted, just a nice time to hang out with friends. As an impulsive person, ice cream calms me down, I eat it all year round,” he reveals to himself.
He has been a representative of the village of Chyše for twenty years continuously, he defended his post after the municipal elections in September. “I was a deputy mayor for a long time, I certainly won’t be that now. But I am also a councilor in the Karlovy Vary region, now in the opposition. But I think that age is already slowly telling me that I should leave it,” Váňa tells Radiožurnál, who after two unsuccessful fights for a seat in the Senate as a non-partisan member of the ANO movement no longer has any further political ambitions.
