It flies. Incredibly fast. Exactly thirteen years ago, there was a plane crash in Yaroslavl, Russia, in which the legendary Pavol Demitra and his Czech hockey friends Ján Marek, Karel Rachúnek and Josef Vašíček died together with his team.
The CNN Prima News portal writes about this tragedy and recalls that Marek was terribly afraid of flying. He talked about it in almost every interview. Engagement in the KHL reportedly brought him many difficult moments long before the tragedy.
The author Lukáš Hron recalls how they once walked together in front of the old hall of Sparta Prague from the ice surface to the car. Marek, one of the most popular people in Czech hockey, talked about Russia.
And especially about flying. About his age-old nightmare.
“I’m terribly afraid. You probably know what Russian planes are,” said a player who had what it takes to play in the NHL.
However, he headed to Russia, and with that comes hundreds of hours a year spent in the air, in machines “that give the impression that they probably still remembered Stalin,” CNN Prima News describes.
Marek allegedly told Alois Hadamczik that he wanted to go home from Russia as soon as possible, allegedly because of what he experienced in the airplanes written in the alphabet.
“It seems to me that I can’t stand the Russian planes more and more. I can still remember one landing when we had a crosswind. I was so sweaty! I would rather go to Moscow for the match for three days by bus,” Marek confessed.
But he wasn’t the only one he told about it. He mentioned concerns about Russian planes in probably all major interviews. He described how he convulsively clutches the cross in his hands every time he flies. How he regularly prays on board.
He described to his former teammate Ján Platil with horror how he was taken when the team plane hit a snow barrier with its wing during some kind of departure from Magnitogorsk.
Jan Marek died on September 7, 2011 in a plane tragedy in Yaroslavl, he was 33 years old.
“Even after all this time, I still remember our short conversation in the Holešovice parking lot, as well as, for example, Marko’s much earlier confession from 2003, when he confided in me after moving from Třinac to Sparta that Prague was a very big city for him, that he is a little afraid of the rumbling, chirping and swarming.
He doubted himself very much, and his eyes were shy rather than fierce, as would be the case of a national team striker. Something else was typical for him: he tried to please everyone.
He was a quiet guy, he probably only once started a certain Russian journalist, who made an article out of sentences that Marek never said. Otherwise, he was sensitive, the kind you don’t come across very often in hockey.
For example, he was very sorry that someone here and there called him a pain sufferer who constantly complains about some health problems,” the journalist recalls of the hockey player.
Russia, Yaroslavl, plane In the picture, rescuers are collecting debris after the plane crash in Yaroslavl.
“Unfortunately, how he feels when he puts on all those Antonovs, Ilyushins or Yakovs was equally untransferable.
In one of his last conversations with journalists, he described that his loved ones advised him to get tranquilizers due to his fear of flying. But he didn’t want to do that,” the author writes, adding that Marek refused and jokingly considered a bottle of vodka instead.
In an interview with hokej.cz, he declared that “I believe that God guides our steps. Nothing happens just like that.” CNN Prima News asks in this regard, “but what higher sense could justify what happened to him? Not even the most learned theologians of the world can explain that.”
Ján Markov was survived by his wife Lucia and a few-month-old son Honzík. And lots of memories too. Not only for famous goals. For medals, cups.
“Even on one hot afternoon, when he came out of the Prague Sparta hall with wet hair,” adds journalist Hron in a beautiful memory.
Source: sportweb.pravda.sk
