TK for the 50th birthday of Jaromír Jágr
Czech hockey players could play for first place in Beijing, believes Jaromír Jágr of the national team
Twenty years ago, you said that you would play hockey until you were fifty. Have you never doubted that?
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I wouldn’t talk about fifty myself, it was always just my reaction to how you journalists asked how old I wanted to play hockey. I remember being about fifteen when my dad told me that if I had a body build after him, I would be the strongest ever in my forties. I believed that if I stayed healthy, I could play until late.
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Do you feel like you’re in your fifties at all?
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Definitely not. I have a lot of young people around me, in my private life and at work, then one ages a little slower. I usually don’t want to get up in the morning, but that’s more because, as I have emotions and adrenaline in me after the match, I fall asleep well after midnight.
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How many years would you like to take?
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Every age has its pluses. As he leaves physically with age, he comes somewhere else, in something else. I do not want to say mentally, but ideologically. Man is changing. And you can replace the loss of strength with experience. It is important to make the most of your time here and not stress unnecessarily.
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What will be the celebration of logs?
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I’m not a person to celebrate much. It doesn’t make me very happy either. My loved ones and friends know this, so I don’t even believe that they would come up with any surprises or get me presents. Tuesday will be a normal day for me like any other. When I run out of time after training with Kladno, I like to watch hockey from the Olympics.
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Only Gordie Howe, who played in the NHL at the age of fifty, can only compare with you in hockey. What do you think about it?
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It was the eighties of the last century, since then the overseas competition has accelerated tremendously and I would no longer be able to play in my NHL years. With age, a person is even more sensitive to injuries, the muscles are not so elastic. Returning after every health problem is more complicated, there remains such a small block in a person that the body is not completely in good condition. This is probably the hardest part of hockey age.
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What still keeps you at hockey?
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If you want to play hockey in your fifties, it must keep you happy. I always believed that God had given me a gift in the form of talent, and I didn’t want to blame myself for not fulfilling it or for being worse than I could have been. There’s actually nothing wrong with my hockey.
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You have Olympic gold, you have won the World Cup twice and you have won the Stanley Cup. How do you compare your trophies?
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Team success has always been crucial for me. The hardest part for me was winning the Olympics, which takes place once every four years, and the whole team has to come together in just those two weeks, everything is perfect. There are many factors that will affect this. The fairest is the Stanley Cup triumph, it’s a long-term affair and managing a series of four winning matches is no longer a coincidence. There will really be who is the best. The world championship seems the easiest to me, it is played every year and a lot depends on which teams are made up according to what players are available.
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So you don’t have any hockey wishes anymore?
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I really don’t have any personal goals anymore, I just want to help Kladno. Especially at the present time, when we had to go to an asylum in Chomutov due to the reconstruction of the winter. I firmly believe that if we save the extra league, we will play next season in Kladno next September.
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Does a nostalgia come with a fifty?
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Modern psychologists say live in the present, I’ve been looking into the past for a long time and I don’t mind at all. Everyone remembers what they experienced. Sometimes I think about things that have happened to me. Success is always just the top of the pyramid, which you only climb occasionally. Everything is related, one carries it within one, but one must try to take it positively. That’s what pulls me forward.
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Do you have any idea what your hockey departure will look like?
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Maybe it’s coming. I’m no longer the predator I used to be at twenty-five, but I’m more of a herbivore, all I need is grass. It makes me happy when I can be with the team, the players listen to me, they do it and say you’re right.
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Aren’t you getting into coach mode a bit?
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We are a very specific club in Kladno, everyone does everything there and we are lucky to have coaches who respect older players who have experienced something. It’s not just me, maybe Pleky has something to say about it and they take it into account. We can talk about it, we found a working model. We can’t buy players for big money and want them to decide. The boys here are the ones who get the chance, and it’s up to them how to deal with it.
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So can you imagine yourself as a coach?
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This is a premature topic, I especially enjoy seeing how players improve. I would rather do with children or adolescents, there are changes to see. They grow under your hands, still listen and are happy to be on the ice. This is only occasionally with professionals.
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