She had tears in her eyes when she got to the mixing area. She was not absent in the Olympic final in Paris, but Eliška Mintálova (25) was aiming higher than ninth place. It was only after the race and her return home that it became clear how difficult conditions she had to prepare for.
Photo: Profimedia
Eliška Mintálová at the 2024 Olympics.
“Water slalom is at war. Instead of focusing on the details necessary for victories, we deal with the incompetent management embodied by the son of the chairman of the water slalom section, who was appointed by his father to the position of general secretary and then team leader of the Olympic team without a selection process. Considering her abilities, she has nothing to look for in the given position,” says the native of Žilina.
How do you look back on your performance at the Paris Olympics?
First of all, I have to admit that we failed at the Olympics. The only goal was a medal. After the successes of the past seasons, when I became European champion, world vice-champion or winner of the World Cup race, I think that this goal was natural and achievable.
In preparation, I did everything at 120 percent. I went there with the feeling that I had a precious metal, but it didn’t work out. The position in the top ten is not bad, although it is disappointing for us. The second thing is the complications that accompanied our Olympic preparation.
What does that mean?
The management and specific officials, out of personal revenge, will start in the Olympic season and before the Paris summit to disrupt the well-established concept of preparation, thanks to which I had excellent previous two seasons, by limiting people in my implementation team, despite the fact that they were approved by my employer Dukla Banská Bystrica and the Top Team.
If this happens, you run into huge complications in securing training and participation in important pre-Olympic events.
The management even went to the trouble of calling all World Cup organizers with an appeal to prohibit issuing accreditations to members of our implementation teams even if they wanted to pay for it themselves.
It has no rationality, because these people do not hinder anyone in the national team, and we operated in a similar setting in previous seasons, where it brought results.
Women’s kayak is a highly competitive discipline. From this point of view, is ninth place in Paris a small satisfaction?
It isn’t. I went there as one of the precious metal aspirants. It didn’t work out and I’m disappointed.
The management of Slovak Canoeing called it a failure. What do you say to that?
The leadership of the union has absolutely nothing to do with it. What significant contribution did it make? My ninth or other placements of representative colleagues will significantly help the association financially. They should be happy and proud.
The team leader of the Slovak team at the 2024 Olympics in Paris, Martin Stanovský Jr. he reproached you for several things, including the fiance in the role of a member of the implementation team. What tasks does it perform?
He is an assistant coach. It primarily helps the coach and me so that training and races run as efficiently as possible. It provides video analysis of the training sessions so that the head coach does not have to use the camera and can solve the details together with me directly at the training session.
I think it is a huge help for us, which makes training significantly more efficient. He helps with timing, communicates with other team members, takes care of the boats, if I need something, he arranges it. He has been an official member of the team for three years.
Thanks to him, my results have improved significantly. Meets all necessary professional certificates. He does his work without the right to a reward in addition to working in his own woodworking company, and the management of the union did not respect him throughout the Olympic year.
What is interesting is that last season the sports director Róbert Orokocký said that he did not know how we did it, but that we were doing a great job.
Were you not touched when, in the evaluation of sports performances, Stanovský described his proposal for a hand under the Eiffel Tower as “engagement for the state?”
The whole post touched us all, and Stanovský only showed that just as he doesn’t understand elite sports, he obviously doesn’t understand the relationship between a man and a woman either, because if my boyfriend decides to propose to me after the Olympics, I don’t have it how to influence…
Source: sportweb.pravda.sk
