Category: Czechoslovakia

Zdena Honsová was part of the Czechoslovak team that won gold at the 1948 Olympic Games. Had there been an all-around competition, Honsová would have won the gold medal in London. She was also part of the Czechoslovak team that took bronze at the 1954 Rome World Championships. (By then, she had married, and her surname was Lišková.)

Twenty years later, Honsová’s daughter, Hana Lišková, was part of the Czechoslovak team that won silver at the Mexico City Olympics and bronze at the Ljubljana World Championships. Her gym was so small that it could not fit a full-size floor exercise mat.

Here’s their story, as told by the Czechoslovak magazine Stadión.

Unlike much of the Czechoslovak team, Marianna Krajčírová was Slovak — not Czech. She was part of the 1964 Czechoslovak team in Tokyo, as well as the 1966 World Championships team that won gold. On a personal level, 1967 was her break-out year. At the 1967 European Championships, she finished third in the all-around and third on bars. Then, at the 1967 “Little Olympics” in Mexico City (essentially an Olympics Test Event), she finished second behind Soviet gymnast Natalia Kuchinskaya.

Here’s a 1967 profile from Stadión on Krajčírová, whose father built her a balance beam to train on at home. Plus, there’s a translation of a short interview with Krajčírová (Némethová at the time) from 1970.

Jaroslava Matlochová was a fixture of the gymnastics community for decades — both as a coach and as a member of the Women’s Technical Committee. In fact, she was one of the early champions of relying on younger gymnasts in women’s artistic gymnastics. Yet, little has been written about her online.

So, here’s a translation of a profile on her, printed in Stadión just after the Czechoslovak women’s team took gold at the Dortmund World Championships.

Bohumila Řimnáčová was a member of the Czechoslovak team that won gold at the 1966 World Championships, silver at the 1968 Olympic Games, and bronze at the 1970 World Championships. Injuries prevented her from competing at the 1964 Olympic Games.

The following profile, printed in Stadión before the Dortmund World Championships in 1966, traces Řimnáčová’s career that took off after she answered a newspaper ad. Like many Czech gymnasts from this era, she originally wanted to be a figure skater.