Bohumír Zeman

“We drove to Alps by car, so only the journey over the border took us three or four hours. The border stop really took this long, as sometimes they let us wait an hour or two and then they searched us, indeed thoroughly, for about two or three hours. We had to fill in a custom declaration, where serial numbers of all of our skis were entered, we also smuggled foreign money hidden in the sticks – money we had bought before from a local illegal money-changer (laughs), these were serious crimes, these things. And they really bullied us. If anyone of us had long hair, they cut it.”

“I was – physically – relatively precocious. Already at fifteen I was close to the level of the national team. As a junior I was officially made older, I could compete against older juniors and men. Then there was this accident that Dukla representatives from Liberec were not allowed to go abroad as they had one-off travel permits while we as students had permanent ones. When we returned from our camp – there was no snow – only we could travel abroad so I competed in my first ever World Cup event at sixteen and I managed to score FIS points that made me eligible for the World Cup. I was given a chance in January, scored some points again and at seventeen could compete at the World Championship in St Moritz.”

“Horák as a trainer always had money for out training trip. Now he said he had none. I had a contract with Elan, which was no one was allowed to know, or at least in part so that some money on my behalf were sent to Pragosport, where I had an account and where they always took away a half. I had some money so I offered to pay for it. And when we were leaving I noticed Horák, taking receipts from the reception. I asked him to hand them over to me. He refused, so I grabbed him by his neck, shouted at him but didn’t really hurt him physically. And for this I was then disqualified for life from the national team.”

“What I value most is my 17th overall ranking in the World Cup and then the victory at Kitzbühel in the 1980s…” – “This was the… “ – “Yes, this was the combined. Should I hand it to you? How should I show it?” (He talks about the cup with the staff, shows it to the camera, note.) – “So tell us, what kind of prize is it?” – “This is a cup for winning combined at Kitzbühel, Hahnenkamm in 1981.” – “Combined – that was…?” – “Combined, that was downhill plus slalom. Classical combined. Now we have combined and super combined where slalom is combined either with super G or downhill. Just one round. Formerly there were two rounds of slalom and then normal downhill” – “And the winner of such combined…?” – “The winner of such an event gets a cup and one cabin of the cable car is named after him which takes racers to the start of the downhill.” – “And all the Czechs wait for it to take a ride…” – “Well, I don’t know if all Czechs… but I wait for it sometimes too when I am there.”