Category: Gymnastics

Věra Čáslavská died in 2016 at the age of 74.

A sports school in Prague will bear Caslavska’s name as of the next school year.

Winner of a total of 11 Olympic medals, seven of them gold, Caslavska captured the All-around at the 1964 and 1968 Olympic Games, joining Soviet Larissa Latynina as the only female gymnast to to have won back-to-back titles. No other woman has won as many individual Olympic gold medals. …

1968 Olympics

During the medal ceremonies for Balance Beam, won by Soviet Natalia Kuchinskaya, and Floor Exercise, where she shared the podium with Larissa Petrik, Caslavska turned her head to the right and down as the Soviet anthem was played, a gesture widely interpreted as a political protest. She returned home to Czechoslovakia to find herself spurned by the government, which did not initially allow her to work as a coach and blocked her from receiving donors. …

After the fall of the Soviet Union in 1989, Caslavska was finally recognized as a national heroine. …

FIG

Click PLAY or watch her political statement on YouTube.

Click PLAY or watch the IOC video on Facebook.

related – I think people should just stick to their profession, that is, unless they agree with me politically 🙂