Bronze medal of Matej Beňuš. Fourth place of Zuzana Paňková. Two sixths by Jakub Grigar. And the ninth position of Eliška Mintálova. These are the results of Slovak rowers at the 2024 Olympics in Paris. It was after them that the war broke out in the most successful Slovak sport under the five rings.
Photo: TASR, Michal Svítok
Water slalom skier Jakub Grigar and coach Stanislav Gejdoš.
It is only the result of two years of tension in the movement, which in difficult times should pull on one end of the rope. However, it is rather the opposite, which was confirmed during the XXXIII Games. the Olympics and shortly after them.
120,000 for preparation? Far from reality
In November 2021, Martin Stanovský st became the head of the wild water section of Slovak Canoeing. According to information from Športweb, problems started happening within the union shortly after that.
A series of several decisions and steps came. One of them was the replacement of the sports director and team leader of Slovak canoeing, Róbert Orokocký, who was replaced by Stanovský’s son – Martin.
He also performed in this position at the Paris Games. Shortly after them, the coach of kayaker Eliška Mintálova, Peter Cibák, sent several sports officials and media representatives an e-mail.
In addition to thanking the Slovak Olympic and Sports Committee (SOŠV) for their support, he criticized Stanovského Jr. younger.
He described his actions at the venue of the Olympics as inadequate and added that “he was not the support of the team in terms of organization or people.”
The e-mail apparently also reached Stanovský mladšie, who responded not only with a letter to Cibák, but also with an interview on the Slovak Canoeing website.
In it, he tried to evaluate the activities of the Slovak water slalom team in Paris. Simply put, they were unsuccessful.
“This is the subject of a deeper analysis, which we are working on. It surprises me because the leadership of Slovak Canoeing managed to provide them with maximum space for preparation in order to achieve top performances.
Thanks to the support of all entities from the Ministry of Tourism and Sports, the Slovak Olympic and Sports Committee to the top sports centers, we managed to secure the historically highest amount of funds for the preparation of our Olympic team.
Each Olympian had 100–120 thousand euros available for 6 months of preparation. It is money that would otherwise go to youth teams and clubs, where they will now be missing.
That is why I am surprised that the Olympians did not evaluate this excellent support as we would have imagined,” Stanovský Jr. responded to the question: What is the reason for the retreat of Slovak whitewater competitors from their historical positions?
Kayaker Grigar reacted indignantly at these amounts on his Instagram. He was angry that Stanovský in the interview talked about the fact that the funds could have been invested in the youth.
“Here we come to an old-known topic. Money. The amount is far from reality, even if you add up all the contributions from the state, my employer – the Dukla Banská Bystria center – and sponsors together.
And even if we imagine that this is the case, we receive this money for results – in my case, silver at the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo – and it is tied directly to the name.
If I don’t spend a penny from them, they can’t be used for youth education or material for children,” explained Grigar.
Source: sportweb.pravda.sk
