One thing like this occurs to Czech swimming at most as soon as each ten years. However this isn’t from Cimrman. The nationwide group returned from the European Championship in Belgrade with a singular seven medals, and Barbora Seemanová with 4 plaques recalled the marketing campaign of Simona Kubová from the EC within the brief pool in Herning in 2013.
“I am laughing in entrance of this group, it has been an unbelievable week. It was touching and profitable,” mentioned coach Petra Škábová.
On the championship in Belgrade, the Czechs impressed with seven medals, three European titles, and two Olympic limits on the final second. After which additionally with one thing fully unprecedented: the Czechs took first and second place within the crawl. Barbora Janíčková completed in silver behind Seemanova, who didn’t suppose lengthy about her finest expertise of a profitable week.
“This has in all probability by no means been achieved in Czech swimming. Finishing the race together with her, typically progressing by the heats, semi-finals, it was an expertise. And singing the hymn and realizing that he’s beside me is so good. You’re feeling higher when you have got somebody from the identical nation there and you may share it with them,” Seeamanová smiled. “I admit that I caught up and did not even have a look at my time, the place I completed. The very first thing I checked was how Barča was doing. And once I came upon that she was second behind me and we had been on the primary two steps, it was a horrible euphoria. You do not expertise that in Czech swimming.”
She herself confirmed that she is properly on her solution to Paris, the place she will likely be among the many wider group of favorites within the 200m crawl. For Janíčková, it is a breakthrough after years when her expertise was hampered by well being issues.
“Yearly she had one thing that introduced her to her knees,” says nationwide group coach Vlastimír Perna. “Now she was lastly fully wholesome after a very long time. She is very sincere, even pedantic. The preparation was steady, that is the principle cause why she managed to enhance.”
“I am glad that after a while I managed to interrupt by, even this considerably,” praised Janíčková.
Breast lifter Kristýna Horská additionally skilled the height of her profession to this point in Belgrade. Within the closing of the 200, she swam a nationwide file of two:23.60, assembly the Olympic restrict and sweetening her life after two tough years, throughout which she needed to have coronary heart surgical procedure and briefly misplaced the sight in a single eye. However she did not absolutely take pleasure in herself within the pool, as a result of she did not have a view of the board with the occasions.
“I did not actually see it there. I came upon about three minutes after the swim. I wasn’t blissful till I came upon that this was the Olympic restrict. Once I noticed that point, I could not consider my eyes,” Horská described.
Daniel Gracík additionally skilled an ideal story. He left for the championship with a time within the 100 butterfly two hundredths away from the Olympic restrict. Within the semi-finals, he got here shut by one other hundredth. And solely within the closing did he break it. And on the championship he added a bronze within the 50, the primary males’s medal for Czech swimming within the new millennium.
“The best expertise was that I might begin with somebody like Šeflík. He could not notice it, however he is a good position mannequin for me,” he paid tribute to nationwide group legend Jan Šefl.
He simply smiled: “I am not experiencing it one way or the other. I want him nice success, he has the whole lot forward of him. I will be watching all 4 on the Olympics.”
Along with Seemanová, Horská and Gracík, engraver Miroslav Knedla additionally swims in Paris.
CZECH SWIMMERS AT THE OLYMPICS
- Barbora Seemanová: 100 meter backstroke, 200 meter backstroke, 100 meter butterfly, 200 meter medley
- Kristýna Horská: 200 meter breaststroke
- Miroslav Knedla: 100 meters backstroke
- Daniel Gracík: 100 meter butterfly
