Vladimír Kocman

“And we always had these, well we called it ‘dead aunt’ or something. We had a marine duffel bag full of salami, cookies, chocolate wafers, instant soup mix and all that and we tried to live off of it there, so our famous trips as top athletes from the national team had this dark side too. Or I remember, and that was really funny, that this very kimono with which I had trained with, well we would arrive with these yellowed kimonos and wash them in Kodokan, the judo school, and we bought their washing powder and used it. The only thing is that we were there for maybe a month and when we were leaving, we all had a perfectly white kimono. It’s just their washing powders were something completely different than what we were used to here. So, those were just small details but they were important, you know… I remember every time we were appearing somewhere, well when you saw the French appear, you know, Adidas, everything fit perfectly, and then you saw the Eastern Bloc: Bulgarians and us, with sweatpants Pleas Jablonec, you know, it had bags on the knees, white zips all around, the red sign on our back and it was all washed out… Well, you were just losing three points already because of that. Because judo, and sports in general, is about self-confidence.”

“And when you crossed this line it was like a load off your mind, the fear was gone and suddenly… you felt completely different there. Even from a plane, looking down on it, you could tell Czechia and Germany apart. Because Czechia was just darkness. A light here and there – a big city, a few lights – whereas in Germany everything was illuminated, the roads, everything, so we always noticed the difference and we really enjoyed it… we really relished it.”