This month’s blog post is dedicated to a woman we admire very much: Věra Čáslavská. A brave woman who never gave up despite all the injustice she suffered. We wanted to share her incredible story with those who maybe have not heard of her.
Věra Čáslavská was a Czech gymnast who dominated the sport during the 1960s; she won 22 international titles between 1962 and 1968 and she won Olympic gold medals in each individual event. But her competitive career came to an abrupt end over her public opposition to the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in August 1968.
In April 1968, she had signed Ludvik Vaculík's protest manifesto "Two Thousand Words" just before the Soviet occupation of Czechoslovakia.
When the Red Army invaded in August, two months before the start of the games, she went into hiding in the mountain town of Šumperk, to avoid being arrested. She carried on her training by lifting bags of coal and practising her floor routine in a field!
“A tree that had fallen became my beam,” she recalled. “I ran up to vault on a forest path. I turned the forest into a gym.”
A last minute change of heart by the Czech goverment allowed her to join the rest of the team in Mexico City in time for the opening Olympic ceremony in October. She went on to win four gold medals and two silver, and defended her all-around title.
But the games were not without controversy. After Čáslavská appeared to have won the gold medal on floor outright, the judging panel curiously upgraded the preliminary scores of Soviet Larisa Petrik, and declared a tie for the gold instead.
All of this occurred on the heels of another very controversial judging decision that cost Čáslavská the gold on beam, instead awarding the title to Soviet rival Natalia Kuchinskaya. Clearly disheartened and angered by the politics that favoured the USSR, she protested during both medal ceremonies by quietly turning her head down and away during the playing of the Soviet national anthem.
Following the Olympics, Vera Caslavska was forced into retirement by the Communist goverment and denied the right to travel. It took seven years before she was allowed to coach and work in the sport again.
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If you would like to read more about Communism in Czechoslovakia, you may be interested in last month's post about Prefab Housing - Czechoslovakian's Great Experiment.
