'I want to be sick. I want to cry. I want to punch something. My golden opportunity has evaporated'

The Velka Pardubicka ended in a dead-heat for the first time on Sunday. The 4m2½f contest is not one for the faint-hearted, with horses and jockeys facing a variety of challenges on the unique cross-country course. 

Last year's Velka field included Mr Spex, who was ridden by leading amateur jockey Patrick Mullins. In this feature, first published exclusively for Racing Post Members' Club subscribers, Mullins provides insight into his visit to the Czech Republic and his experience riding in the Velka.

Members' Club Ultimate subscribers have access to all our interviews, special reports, features and tipping. Sign up now and use the code MEMBERS24 to get 50% off your first three months.

Saturday

I’m sitting outside the Café Bajer on a busy street in Pardubice. It is 4pm. Some people are drinking champagne, others coffee. Different kinds of people.

I’m reading The Sweet Science by AJ Liebling and a 27-year-old Rocky Marciano has just knocked out a 37-year-old Joe Louis. Knocked him clean out through the ropes. It was to be Joe’s last ever fight.

I catch the waitress’s eye and order an Americano and a Jameson and ginger ale. She disappears inside. There’s a piano playing in there and there’s light applause every so often from the handful that are listening. 

I was at the races earlier, met my trainer and my owner’s manager, discussed the horse and the race with them and now I’ve the afternoon to kill.

The waitress reappears with my drinks. She asks whether I’m here for the Velka. I am, I reply, I’m actually riding in it. (Shameless, I know.) 

“Who do you ride?”

“Mr Spex.”

She lights up.

“Mr Spex! He is my and my mother’s favourite!” 

Mr Spex won the race last year and is still only nine. His winning rider from last year is injured and I’ve been asked to take over. His picture is on posters all around the town. To have a chance to ride a previous winner of the Velka, and one still in his prime, is a rare opportunity and one that has me as excited as I’ve ever been.

Three Englishmen stop and wish me luck and chat for a minute. They wander on. Then a man in a tweed suit and a fedora, and his elegantly dressed wife, sitting at the next table, come over to shake my hand and wish me luck in broken English. Five minutes later an older Czech lady comes out from inside and the only words I understand are “Velka Pardubicka” as she talks excitedly, waves her hands and pats me on the shoulder. I smile, spread my hands and say “Irlandaise”, presumably because subconsciously I know we must both speak French equally as badly, giving us a common ground. She returns inside and the piano starts up again.

I grab a salmon at a restaurant in the main cobbled square, beneath the massive clock tower. Rocky Marciano is 31 now and beats 38-year-old Jersey Joe Walcott to become heavyweight world champion in an absolute belter of a fight. There’s a market and a concert going on outside my restaurant. A blonde woman is singing with an orchestra on the stage and they’re doing a rocking rendition of Mr Brightside as I leave.

I run a hot bath back in the apartment. I’d been running at the track earlier in the day before I was stopped by a female security guard who told me, through Google Translate on her phone, that “you can’t be running around here like crazy”, promptly shepherding me off the track. I made sure to blow some sweat on her as I went. 

I watch Ireland win the rugby on TV and I finish my book while I sweat in the bath, with a 33-year-old Rocky Marciano knocking out a 38-year-old Archie Moore to defend his title: “He was counted out with his left arm over the middle rope as he tried to rise. It was a crushing defeat . . . but he had made a hell of a fight.” I turn the light switch off and I’m asleep before the light goes out. 

Sunday

Three strides out. No-one in front of me and on a perfect stride. Ideal.

Two strides out. Horse on my inside coming left, pushing us to jump the fence at an angle. Not ideal.

One stride out. A horse from out of my eyeline dives across both of us. No stride, no fence. Shit.

Now, click your fingers and say all that at the same time. I know we’re done before we take off. You cannot be serious. Why this horse, in this race, on this day? Crash. Bang. Shouts. Wallop. Dust. 

Amazingly, nothing tramples me, glances me or lands on me. I’m standing up. I’m looking at the Velka Pardubicka field galloping on without me. Like a man standing at a harbour, watching a ship to the new world that he’s missed sailing over the horizon. My golden opportunity evaporated. I want to be sick. I want to cry. I want to punch something. I can’t do any of them so I fire my helmet to the ground and shout into the wind because I don’t feel like walking quietly away from this. I put too much into this. Again. I’m angry. I’m frustrated. I’m sad. I growl to let some of it out, but it doesn’t help. You can hold back these feelings but I just let them flood in because I can’t be . . . can’t be . . . whatever. 

I look around and it is like that scene on the beach in Saving Private Ryan. There’s one jockey in black being attended to by two paramedics. Another in yellow is already walking off into the distance. There’s one in blue and white in the foetal position on the ground, moaning. I go over and kneel beside him. “I’m just winded,” he says (I think) through gritted teeth. I take his helmet off and leave him alone.

Another jockey is walking around looking at the ground, carrying my stick. “That’s mine,” I tell him. He gives it to me. I need to keep moving so I march off toward the finish. The crowd is applauding and gasping above the commentator, but I don’t feel like watching. I storm off past a fence steward. His face is like a guy waiting for a subway train. He’s seen it all before I suppose. It is the Taxis. 

I walk over to the finish and wait. Take my gloves off. Take my colours off for some reason. I can’t cross the track until the race finishes. The cheering starts to build. The bell rings as they enter the straight. The sound of hooves gallops by. A 40-year-old Jan Faltejsek has won it on Sacamiro. Rumour has it he dislocated his shoulder at Merano two weeks ago. He hadn’t ridden since. That’s a treble for him today, and one fall. It’s also a sixth Velka for him. He is showing a remarkable resistance to the erosion of time. What a jockey. What a man. 

Jan Faltejsek defies the years after landing another Velka Pardubicka aboard SacamiroCredit: Patrick McCann

I get back to the weigh room. James Best has finished fourth and Sean O’Keeffe has completed. They’re buzzing and I smile and nod at their excited recollections and try to say appropriate things while sipping my second drink. I think I succeed.

Willie calls. He suggests looking at how Faltejsek rides the race in future. Is there anything worse than someone offering advice in the immediate aftermath of a disaster? 

Charlie Mann texts me asking me how I got on, that he didn’t get to see the race. Oh, feck off Charlie, I know you won the bloody thing!

I meet Sara Rose and Vanessa Ryle, who are over supporting, after the race and we pile into a taxi, my second time today, and head to the train station. Paddy Barlow comes too, along with James, Sean and Erica, Sean’s girlfriend. We meet Dougie Taylor and his crew at the station. A train to Prague arrives and we crowd on. There are no free seats so we stand at the end of the carriage. Until a ticket checker comes along and tells us we are on the wrong train. He disappears. A woman comes and confirms we are on the wrong train. They look dissatisfied. 

The sign says Prague is the next stop so we reckon we’ll be fine. Then a different woman comes. She’s on a warpath. She confirms, for a third time, that we are indeed on the wrong train and informs us that they’re stopping specially at the next station to kick us off. No, she can’t sell us tickets, the train is full, off, off, off. So, we off. Hello, Kolin. We laugh at the good of it and board the next train to Prague and stand beside the rattling toilet for 40 minutes and eventually make it to Prague. 

Dinner is tasty and I’ve managed to push that feeling of wanting to get sick, cry and punch something to one side. It’s not extinguished but it’s just a candle in the corner. How much do I want this? I lost 5lb from my normal weight in the last two weeks and sweated another 4lb in the past 24 hours. (I know, other lads do the same for less. Poor me.) James Best was drinking tea to put on weight and Sean O’Keeffe was borrowing lead. The girls are drinking their porn star martinis and flirting with the waiter, but I’m only half-listening. How much do I want this? I could leave it at that, curse the race and curse the luck. Simplest thing to do.

“Do you know,” James Best had said to me earlier in that jolly way of his, “the lads at home think I’m crazy coming over to ride in this race. But I love it.”

Why do I want this? Because it is crazy. And I do love it. And it is a proper race. And it is hard. And I don’t want to be 60 and saying I rode in the Velka but this and that happened. I’ve spent the last 15 years or so riding the same races, at the same tracks, against pretty much the same people. The world is big, and life is short. Do something different. So yeah, I do want to come back. I finish my steak and zone back in on the conversation. 

Read more of our Sunday Reads here:

Karl Burke: 'I've been prepared to put my balls on the line. Sometimes things have worked out. Sometimes they haven't' 

The Generation Game: 'Other people look at eyes and ears and fetlocks but for me it's bottoms - it all started with John Francome and it seems as good a system as any' 

Sir Mark Prescott: 'At Ascot, you couldn't see anything wrong with British racing – and yet we know there are terrible troubles' 

Oisin Murphy: 'Having my counsellor is a big help - I don't feel anything I bring to her is too much' 

Pick up your copy of The Big Jump Off, packed with everything you need for the 2024-25 National Hunt season. Our 72-page supplement includes ante-post tips, pro punter insight, trainer and jockey analysis and much more. Grab your copy free in the Racing Post newspaper on Monday, October 21, also available via the Racing Post Digital Newspaper as part of Members' Club Ultimate, our unrivalled subscription package.