czechmatediary.com

I bet you didn’t know this one: the Wall Street Jurnal ranked Roman Sebrle, a Czech athlete from Lanskroun, the World’s Greatest Athlete of 2008. Not only that, as a winner of decathlon in 2004, he holds the same title from the Summer Olympics of that year (and has been holding that title for past 4 years). (more…)

5 brave guys from Brno (Czech Republic) will be soon immortalized in the Guinness book of world records. They all scuba-dive for living and one day they decided to take it up a notch and stay underwater for 1 hour with just ONE oxygen bomb. What does’ that mean? That means that each one of them could take only one breath from the oxygen tank per minute. Can you imagine to take only 60 breaths in one hour? (more…)

You may not know it but during communism the sport of the “rich and famous” was tennis. Now, almost 20 years later the situation has changed; tennis is still kind of popular but it got definitely overpowered by a new sport giant - GOLF. Over half of the golf courses in the formal Eastern European block are located in the Czech Republic! The Czechs can currently pick from over 80 golf courses spread out all over the country. If you are a golf fan and would like to read up more on this “issue”, click here.

CZ: Za komunismu to byl tenis. Jaky sport ovlada Ceskou Repubiku dnes? Budete se divit (tedy alespon ja nad tim kroutim hlavou), ale je to GOLF. V roce 1991 mel tento stat poze 5 golfovych hrist; dnes jich je tam pres vice nez 80. Vice o tomto tematu si muzete precist zde.

One of the best goalies in the history of NHL ,Dominik Hasek, announced on Monday that we was retiring from hockey. He began to play for NHL (Chicago Blackhawks) in 1990 and over his 18-year long career Dominik managed to win the Stanley Cup (twice!), the NHL’s Hart Trophy (twice!), the Vezina prize for the best goalie (6 times!!) and other trophies. Of course, we cannot forget the fact that he led the Czech Republic to Olympic Gold at Nagano in 1998. I remember that year like it was yesterday. The streets of Prague were filled with thousands of drunk and ecstatic Czechs like never before - one would have thought that we had won the World War or something! (more…)

Here is a fun way to educate yourself about the Czech Republic. I promise you, this history lesson will not bore you for sure…

CZ: Mate chut na pikantni zajimavosti o Ceske repulice? Nize uvedena lekce v historii vas urcite nudit nebude….

Satelite View

The Czech Republic is one of the few inland countries whose borders can be seen from satellite photographs. The location of the Czech Republic can be best recognized by its border mountains on satellite photos made from a height of 900 kilometers.

Bohemia
According to Roman reports, the Latin name of the Czech lands Boiohaemum (Bohemia) is derived from the name of the Celtic tribe that settled on the territory of today´s Czech Republic. (more…)

My parents were avid tennis players so we used to watch Lendl play on our black-and-white TV, the one where you had to painfully twist the buttons to get somewhat of a clear picture. The image was never great but good enough for us to see the moving tennis ball….and the dazzling Ivan Lendl. Ivan was born in 1960 to a couple of prominent tennis players from Ostrava, Czech Republic. Ivan became a professional tennis player at the age of 18 when he won both the French open as well as the Wimbledon and was ranked no.1 junior player. In 1981 he managed to emigrate to the US where he lived for a while with his lifelong coach, the famous polish tennis player, Wojtek Fibak. It was Wojtek who introduced him to his current wife, Samantha, a friend of Fibak’s family. (more…)

If you are in a mood of being helpful to our world without being paid, the 42nd International Children’s Games in San Francisco is looking for volunteer Czech translators. The games will be held on July 10-15th and are expecting a Czech team coming from Cesky Krumlov. This year’s SFICG event is hosting children from 90 cities, 50 countries and 6 contintents! So, if you don’t show up our kids will just end up racing in the opposite direction because they didn’t know what the referee was saying….;-)

Hledaji se dobrovolni prekladatele pro Detske olympicke hry v San Francisku!

For more info contact: (more…)

A world-known fisherman (and also the son of a famous Czech musician and producer, Karel Vagner) Jakub Vagner recently completed another record: while on his trip to Amazonia, Jakub caught a 190 kilograms (419 lb) catfish which is to be the biggest sweet-water fish ever caught. Not only did the fish “flew by” for over 400 meters before Jakub managed to even slow this thing down but the the size of this fish also destroyed all of his fishing gear as well as his hands…but it was well worth it. (more…)

Do you like to bike? And would you like to learn how to bike from Prague to Paris and - if you are not dead by then - back? Click here.

A Slovak hockey player, Richard Zednik, who plays for the Florida Panthers lost 5 units of blood on Sunday after the player had his carotid artery cut by a teammate’s skate in a freak accident. After an hour long surgery Zednik is in a stable condition now. From the amount of blood that was covering the ice on that day people thought that he had actually cut the jugular vain as it was the case in 1989 with another hockey player, Clint Malarchuk. (more…)