Czechmatediary

The 2010 Olympic Games start next week in Vancover. How is the Czech Republic going to do this time? Four years ago the Czechs won 4 medals: gold for cross country skier Katerina Neumannova, silver for cross country skier Lukas Bauer, and bronze for men’s ice hockey team. athleets

This year the Czech Republic Olympic team is bigger than ever, mounting to the total of 93 members! The Czech Olympic committee says that even athletes who have little chance of succeeding should be allowed to take part, budget permitting. “”For the Summer Olympic Games in Athens we took with us a very young athlete, a javelin thrower called Barbora Špotáková. She was in seventh or eighth place there [actually she finished 23rd]…It was her first Olympic Games. In her second Olympic Games in Beijing she was Olympic champion. And we think if she hadn’t taken part in Athens, she couldn’t have made it in Beijing, to win gold at her first Olympics….So we don’t take everyone, but we take those who we feel have achieved a very good effort, very good results. And we wish the best for them.” (more…)